Scribble Pad
by White Squirrel
Summary: An anthology of chapters I wrote for stories that ultimately didn't go anywhere, but might still be worth posting. Free to anyone who wants them.
1. The Obligatory Time Travel Fic:Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling at all times between 1990 and whenever Congress sees fit to allow the copyright to expire. If you time travel to before 1990, please consult the local temporal copyright laws.

Parts of this chapter are quoted from _Harry Potter and the Philosopher_ _'s Stone_.

* * *

 **Introduction**

Over the years, there have been a number of stories that I started writing seriously, only to abandon them after the first chapter or two, for any number of reasons. In fact, half of my initial list of stories when I first starting writing fanfiction went this way. I've learnt over time that only about a third of my ideas actually make it to posting—often for good reason, but sometimes just because I decide it isn't the story I want to write, or I'm the wrong person to write it. Because of this, I've accumulated about a dozen completed chapters of various stories that are collecting dust on my hard drive, and some of them are probably worth continuing if someone else wants to take a crack at them. So I decided, like so many fanfic authors, to clean them up and post them all in an anthology. Regular updates of my major stories will continue, of course.

I know that _The Mountains of the Moon_ and _The Philosopher_ _'s Red Herring_ also fall into this category, and _The Stag and the Swan_ sort of does as well, but since I've already posted those separately, I'm going to leave them where they are.

So here's how it's going to work. For each of these incomplete stories, I will post what chapters I have (the longest is four) in chronological order. (So the later chapters may be better.) Additionally, I will describe where I had planned for the story to go and why I decided to drop it. If anyone decides they want to write their own version, go ahead. I have no objection, although I would appreciate a PM so I can read it. For some of these stories, I have more detailed notes that I can send via PM as well.

* * *

The first story in this anthology, to be brutally honest, was so poorly-conceived that I never even gave it a proper title. It would have been a boilerplate time travel story with Harry jumping back to his eleven-year-old body. He would have had a sensible, easy time of it instead of dragging things out for four years to the graveyard scene, but otherwise not much new, and I dropped it for that very reason: it was almost completely unoriginal. And moreover, I later realised that _A Little Child Shall Lead Them_ was a much better idea, so I took that one and ran with it.

The one original part of this story would have been the basilisk's character arc. Instead of the basilisk being automatically hostile and killed right away, or being automatically friendly to any Parselmouth, she would have been a real character who believed in Salazar Slytherin's views in this story. Harry would have had to build trust with her over time and persuade her of his more tolerant views of muggle-borns. I liked the idea, but it ultimately wasn't enough to carry the story, so I let it go.

* * *

 **The Obligatory Time Travel Fic: Chapter 1**

Harry Potter awoke confused and disoriented. He was in a cramped, dark space, lying on a cot under a threadbare blanket. He felt funny—weak and off-balance when he tried to sit up. He fumbled around in dust and cobwebs, feeling oddly familiar shapes around him. He couldn't find his wand. His hand brushed a hanging chain, and he pulled it, illuminating a single, bare light bulb overhead.

Of course, he was in his cupboard at Number 4 Privett Drive. But how had he got there? This house was destroyed three years ago. The last thing he remembered was…he couldn't quite remember the last thing he remembered. He tried to focus harder. There had been that last fight on the surface, evacuating the survivors, hiding underground with the Unspeakables, and then…the ritual! A flood of memories came back to him: four long, hard years fighting an unwinnable war—a war that had claimed almost everyone he held dear, the desperate search for a solution, an insane plan that no one would ever have dared attempt even a year earlier, concocted by the best and brightest of a dozen different nations. He could remember the ritual now: the ritual intended to send his memories back ten years into the past, in the hopes that he could prevent the horror that the future had become.

That was it. He looked down and saw the body of a skinny, not-quite-eleven-year-old boy, dressed in too-large clothes cast off by his cousin. It looked like the ritual was a success. He immediately thought over the Plan to vanquish Tommy Boy—that was the official nickname after the Taboo disaster. It was complicated, but he could easily do it without the Death Eaters breathing down his neck, though he figured he should probably write it down in order to keep it straight.

And then, with a start, he remembered the _other_ ritual—the one he had memorised and that had to be performed at the correct time—the one that he had to write down as soon as possible so that he didn't forget a single piece. If the stillness in the house was any indication, he had a little while before his alleged relatives woke up. He couldn't remember whether they had locked the cupboard last night, not that it would have stopped him, but as luck would have it, they hadn't. He slipped out quietly and quickly nicked a notepad and pen from the kitchen. He took them back to his cupboard and started writing furiously. It took him almost an hour to write down all the runes and incantations along with an outline of the Plan, but when he looked it over, he was sure he'd got it right. Then, he lay back and waited for the next step to fall into place.

Harry heard his relatives as soon as they stirred. He hadn't been sure how he would feel about seeing them alive again, but he was surprised to find he didn't feel much of anything. He guessed he was happy that they weren't dead, but beyond that, they might as well have been complete strangers to him.

Not that he wasn't going to get revenge.

* * *

 _There was a horrible smell in the kitchen when Harry went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in grey water._

" _What's this?" he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question._

" _Your new school uniform," she said._

 _Harry looked in the bowl again._

" _Oh," he said, "I didn't realise it had to be so wet."_

" _Don't be stupid," snapped Aunt Petunia. "I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things grey for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished."_

 _Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry_ _'s new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table._

 _They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat._

" _Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper._

" _Make Harry get it."_

" _Get the mail, Harry."_

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," he said. Harry went to the door. If the ritual had gone as planned, he knew he should find…yes, there it was: an envelope of yellowish parchment addressed in emerald green ink to "The Cupboard under the Stairs." He went straight back to the kitchen and handed the other letters to his uncle with a quick, "Here's the mail, Uncle Vernon." Then he turned to his aunt and said with a wicked grin stretching across his face, "and you'll recognise _this_ , Aunt Petunia." He handed her his Hogwarts letter.

 _Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise._

" _Vernon! Oh my goodness—Vernon!"_ she cried."It's _them_!"

Vernon took one look at the envelope and went from red to green to grayish-white in a matter of seconds.

"What is that?" Dudley demanded. "What's going on?"

"Oh, that's just my acceptance letter to magic school, _Dudders_."

"What!"

"There is no such thing as—" Vernon roared.

"Oh, I think we both know there is, Uncle Vernon," Harry said calmly. "And I'll be taking that back now."

"You'll do no such thing!"

Harry reached out toward them and spoke the words, " _Accio_ letter." The envelope leaped out of Petunia's grip and back into his hand. Dudley started screaming.

"You—you can't do that!" Vernon stammered, rising to his feet, fists raised. "I will not have you going to that freak school!"

"Sit!" Harry shouted. He reached down deep to the powerful reserves of "accidental" magic that his young body possessed and flared it out into the room, making the lights flicker and rattling everything that wasn't bolted down. He instantly regretted the action as he felt his energy drain away and struggled to keep his feet. His body was too young and untrained to this properly _with_ a wand, let alone without one, but it was enough to make the three horrified Dursleys sit back down at the table.

"You will not be telling me what I can and cannot do anymore," Harry ordered while he tried to keep from panting. "I'm a powerful wizard, like my parents—oh, yes. I know about them, too—and I am perfectly capable of making your lives more _abnormal_ than you can imagine. You will not restrict my movements, and you will not attempt to keep any of my possessions from me. I know how much Dudley loves his second bedroom, so I will be moving into the guest bedroom for the rest of the summer. "After that, I'll be out of your hair."

His relatives were staring at him with expressions of fear and rage. "Really you should be happy," he insisted. "You only have to put up with me until the first of September now, and after that… _if_ everything goes as planned, and I succeed in killing the evil wizard who murdered my parents—yes, I also know about _that_ —then you'll never have to see me again. Now, I'm going over to Mrs. Figg's house so I can reply to this letter. I'll see you all later…maybe." With that, the Boy-Who-Wasn't-Going-To-Take-It-Anymore walked away, leaving the Dursleys speechless.

* * *

Arabella Figg answered the door to find Harry Potter standing on her doorstep, much to her surprise.

"Why hello, there, Harry," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"Mrs. Figg," Harry tried to say in a sweet eleven-year-old voice. "I just got a letter from a school called Hogwarts…"

"Oh you got your Hogwarts letter, that's wonderful."

"You know about it?" he said eagerly.

"Of course, Harry. I can't do magic, but most of my family can. I know all about it. You _are_ going, aren't you."

"I don't know…Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia never told me about magic or anything…"

Mrs. Figg's face fell. "Oh, of course they wouldn't," she grumbled.

"Aunt Petunia said you might know something. Do you know what it means when they want…an owl?"

"Yes, Harry. Witches and wizards use owls to deliver letters. I _do_ have a post owl you can use. Would you like to send a letter now?"

"Yes, please."

Mrs. Figg brought him a pen and paper—not a quill and ink, he noted—and chatted with him a little as he began to write. He thought he had managed to act suitably shocked when she told him the real story of his parents' deaths, but he was mainly focused on the letter:

 _Dear Ms. McGonagall,_

Was that right? Yes, the letter didn't actually say "Professor" on it.

 _I am very surprised to learn about the existence of magic and about Hogwarts. My Aunt and Uncle never really told me anything about it until today. I probably wouldn_ _'t have believed it, except it would explain a few strange thing that have happened in the past. And Mrs. Figg says it's real._

So far, so good. The trick was to do this without using any magicky words like "muggle."

 _I_ _'d love to go to a magical school, but I don't really know anything about magic besides what she told me, and I have no idea where I can buy any of the school supplies, even if I had the money. Is there some kind of—_

No, no, no. He just barely stopped himself from writing "orientation." Far too grown-up.

— _meeting or anything where I can learn about magic and get help with the supplies? Also, I don_ _'t think Uncle Vernon will want to drive me around, so is there any magical way to get to a meeting?_

 _Thanks,_

 _Harry Potter_

* * *

Harry didn't have long to wait. The very next morning, another letter came through the mail slot with the Hogwarts seal on it. He hid it in his shirt, not bothering to show it to his relatives, and read it up in the guest room.

 _Dear Mr. Potter,_

 _I am most disappointed to hear that you have not been told about your magical heritage. This is a serious oversight and should not have been allowed to happen, and I hope to remedy this problem as quickly as possible._

 _I would like to formally invite you to the Hogwarts orientation for students of non-magical heritage this Saturday, the 27th, at King_ _'s Cross Railway Station in London. This letter is a portkey. Be sure that you are holding it at precisely 9 o'clock in the morning on the 27th, and it will transport you directly to King's Cross. During the orientation, I will personally escort you to Gringott's Wizarding Bank to access your account. Your parents left you a substantial sum of money when they died, so you need have no fear of not being able to afford school supplies._

 _Once you have your money, if you wish to make additional trips to magical London, you will be able to take the Knight Bus. Simply hold out your right hand at the side of the street whilst thinking about the name. It will take you anywhere you want to go in Great Britain._

 _I hope that you will, indeed, choose to attend Hogwarts this fall. I can assure you that it will be far more pleasant than your current situation._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress_

Harry was surprised that she mentioned the Knight Bus. She probably guessed that he would want to get away from his relatives if he could. It was easy, after all these years, to read between the lines of her restrained letter. She was mad. He imagined the chewing out she must have given Dumbledore and smiled.

He remembered Minerva McGonagall fondly. She wasn't always supportive of him, but when push really— _really_ —came to shove, she was as fierce a lion as any. He hadn't personally seen her die, but he had heard the story—fighting to the last and going down with her school. Now, if he had his way, she would never have to fight that fight.

With nothing to do until the orientation, Harry decided he would just relax for the next two days. It was an almost unreasonably good feeling. He hadn't been able to truly relax since…well, since Tommy Boy came back, really, and he wouldn't be getting much of it for the next year, either. He'd forgotten how good it felt.

* * *

At nine o'clock on Saturday morning, Harry held up McGonagall's letter and was whisked away to King's Cross, landing in a heap in an out-of-the-way spot near Platform Ten. He never had got used to portkey travel. Within seconds of each other, six muggle-born witches and wizards and ten parents landed in a circle around him. Several of them promptly lost their breakfasts. Harry noticed Professor McGonagall standing up at the head of the circle, but he was quickly distracted by a familiar voice.

"Augh, was that _really_ the best way to get here?"

"Are you okay, Hermione?" a tall, dark-haired man said.

"I think so…"

Tears filled Harry's eyes unbidden as he watched Hermione Jean Granger pull herself to her feet. She looked so young and happy, present circumstances aside. He couldn't believe she'd ever been that young. It was a good thing everyone who saw him thought his tears were tears of nausea. It took everything in him not to run over and hug the bushy-haired little witch senseless, or worse, kiss her on the cheek. That wouldn't go over well with her father standing right there, even aside from the fact that she was eleven and he was almost twenty-one.

He recognised the others, too: Justin and Kevin, who had died in Azkaban; Sophie, one of the many casualties of the Snatchers; Dean, who had died in the Battle of Hogwarts; and little, waifish Sally-Anne, who had thankfully escaped Tommy Boy's reign of terror by moving to Canada after first year.

"Ahem," Professor McGonagall said. Harry hastily wiped the tears from his eyes and rose to his feet. "I apologise for the mode of transport. All forms of magical transportation take some getting used to. Mr. Potter, are you travelling alone?"

"Y-yes ma'am," he said, trying to play they nervous little boy.

"Then I will be accompanying you. Everyone follow me, please." She led them out to the platforms. "These are the other muggle-born students—those from non-magical families—who will be starting at Hogwarts this year," she explained to Harry. "I have already visited them to explain about magic, and I will be happy to answer any questions you have."

"Thank you, ma'am. Mrs. Figg told me a little…she told me about my parents."

"Ah, yes," McGonagall said sadly, too quietly for the other families to hear. "Your parents were some of my best students, and they were good friends of mine. We were all hit very hard by their deaths." She returned to business and explained to the group how to get through the barrier to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and had them all run through for a quick look.

Harry was hit by another wave of memories when he saw the platform. It wasn't in use right now; the great scarlet steam engine was absent, but he remembered the brightly-lit platform well. The last time he had seen it was the summer after sixth year. He'd never got the chance to go back and say goodbye to his friends there one last time, never had a chance to ride the Express back after graduation. For that matter, he'd never even graduated, though he'd racked up a few certifications in the intervening years.

But alas, they couldn't stay. They had a lot of ground to cover today. Professor McGonagall led them out of the station, and Harry smiled sadly as they passed Platforms Seven and Eight, remembering the daring escape they had made. In the mad flight after the Battle of Hogwarts, what was left of the Resistance had gathered as many allies and muggle-borns as they could find and had done the last thing the Death Eaters expected: they commandeered the Magical Orient Express at Platform Seven and a Half, supercharged it with magic, and rode it to France. With every wand they could spare trained on the engine to speed it up, the Magical Orient Express went screaming out of King's Cross at over two hundred miles per hour.

In his anger, Tommy Boy had levelled the entire station. Hundreds of muggles died; the Underground was crippled, and the Statute of Secrecy was in serious jeopardy. It was the first serious spillover of the war into the muggle world. The first of many.

Harry was eternally grateful that the Leaky Cauldron was within walking distance of King's Cross, for that gave him enough time to do the one thing he really needed to do before they got there: talk to Hermione before she found out he was the Boy-Who-Lived.

It was funny, he thought, having to work up the nerve to talk to Hermione Granger, the girl who had been his most supportive friend for seven years—his fellow misfit right from the start. He slipped back a couple of places in the line until he was alongside her. Then, he extended a hand to her and said, "Hi, I'm Harry Potter. Who are you?"

Hermione looked a little surprised that he had actually approached her, but she excitedly shook his hand and said, "Pleased to meet you. I'm Hermione Granger. This is ever so exciting, isn't it. I just couldn't believe magic was real, but when Professor McGonagall turned a lamp into penguin…"

Harry struggled to keep from cracking up at her enthusiasm. He could swear her eyes twinkled like Dumbledore's when she got into one of her little spiels. Her parents had to calm her down so that they could introduce themselves to him.

"Harry, why are you travelling alone?" Mrs. Granger asked. "Couldn't your parents come?"

Harry shook his head. "No, uh, my parents died when I was a baby—they were actually magical, but my Aunt and Uncle hate magic, so they didn't want to come."

"Oh no, I'm sorry!" Hermione exclaimed, and she grabbed him in a hug.

Harry didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that. For one thing, Hermione was hugging a boy she had just met—in front of her parents, no less. She may have been best known for her brains, but Harry had always had to remind himself that not only was she Ravenclaw enough to brew Polyjuice Potion in a bathroom in her second year, but she was also Gryffindor enough to actually _do_ it. But he had to suppress his amazement that she felt like she was the one who needed to hug _him_. She had no reason to think otherwise, of course. It was just that he couldn't get the image out of his head of the last time he had seen her: lying on the steps of Hogwarts in a pool of blood, her throat ripped out by the fangs of Nagini.

She pulled back, seeing the tears running down his cheeks and a distant look on his face. "Um…sorry," she said nervously.

It took a moment for his brain to reengage and remember what they were talking about. He removed his glasses and wiped his face with sleeve. "It's okay…really," he said. "I think I have some cousins in the magical world. I can probably find another place to stay pretty fast."

Her parents looked on in surprise at the casual (not to mention delusionally hopeful-sounding) way that he talked about leaving his home, but of course, he now knew now how easy it would have been if Dumbledore had ever let him. In fact, he could probably get the Grangers to take him in if he wanted, but there was no need for that in the Plan.

He asked Hermione a few questions about herself and let her prattle on as they walked. A few minutes later, they reached the Leaky Cauldron, and he braced himself for what was coming. It was only when Tom the bartender's eyes flew straight to his scar that he realised that Hermione hadn't even mentioned the mark on his forehead.

"Good Lord, is this—can this be?"

The pub went silent. The regular patrons craned their necks to see him and whispered to each other. The muggle-borns just looked confused.

" _Bless my soul," whispered the old bartender, "Harry Potter… what an honour."_

 _He hurried out from behind the bar, rushed toward Harry and seized his hand, tears in his eyes._

" _Welcome back, Mr. Potter, welcome back."_

 _Then there was a great scraping of chairs and the next moment, Harry found himself shaking hands with everyone in the Leaky Cauldron._

" _Doris Crockford, Mr. Potter, can't believe I'm meeting you at last."_

" _So proud, Mr. Potter, I'm just so proud."_

" _Always wanted to shake your hand—I'm all of a flutter."_

" _Delighted, Mr. Potter, just can't tell you, Diggle's the name, Dedalus Diggle."_

McGonagall saved him from the crush: "Excuse me, but Mr. Potter is just passing through to purchase his school supplies, and we have a tight schedule to keep. Good day."

Harry was just thankful that Professor Quirrell wasn't there today. That was going to be awkward enough at school. McGonagall led them to the back of the pub where the entrance to Diagon Alley was located. The other children gasped in wonder when the portal opened up. Harry did, too, but for a different reason. For him, the last time he had seen this place, it was a smoking ruin.

"What was all that about?" Hermione asked him as they started down the alley.

"Apparently, I'm famous because everyone thinks I defeated the Dark Lord You-Know-Who as a baby," he said with an edge of annoyance.

" _What?!"_

"Yeah, the thing is it was actually my mother who defeated him, but everyone thinks it was me because…well, I was the only one who survived…I'm sure there's books about it."

Harry chuckled inwardly at the gleam that appeared in Hermione's eyes when he mentioned the books, but presently, he discretely took the pages of his to-do list out of his pocket and added an item that he couldn't believe he had forgotten: _Properly memorialise James and Lily Potter_.

McGongall led the group to Gringotts, where the muggle-borns exchanged pounds for galleons, but Harry was taken down to his vault. It was then that he began to put his Plan into action. He innocently asked for a money bag at the teller's desk and charged a fairly nice model with an Extension Charm to his account. Then, once they were through the security, he cast a mild wandless Confundus Charm on McGonagall so that she wouldn't notice just how much gold he was swiping from his vault. He didn't want to risk asking her for his key. When he was sure he had enough for everything he wanted to buy, he walked back to the cart as if nothing were out of the ordinary. As they passed the tellers on the way out, he innocently asked to change some galleons to pounds so that he could buy some nicer muggle clothes. Seeing the over-sized rags he was dressed in, McGonagall readily approved.

McGonagall gave the muggle-borns maps of the Alley and explained about buying their school supplies. They would up again when they were done at Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour. Harry let himself bask in the wonder of Diagon Alley, playing the eager schoolboy as she escorted him. He even asked if he could buy a gold cauldron, which of course didn't go over any better with her than it had with Hagrid. They passed the Grangers in the book shop, and Harry jokingly reminded Hermione that she had to get to the other stores, too.

He did convince McGonagall to let him get an owl. "So I won't have to borrow Mrs. Figg's," he said. He entered Eeylops Owl Emporium and quickly picked out a beautiful snowy owl. He pretended to pick out a name for her at random from _A History of Magic_ and "stumbled upon" Hedwig. The owl gazed at him with intelligent eyes, almost as if she recognised him, although she gave him an offended look when he said, "Hello, old girl." She wasn't that old yet. He whispered a promise to her to keep her in a cage as little as possible. If he had let her fly freely in the escape from Privett Drive, she probably would have survived.

The last shop they visited, once again, was Ollivander's. Harry hadn't been in _here_ since he bought his wand the first time, and the difference was unbelievable. He could _feel_ the magic flowing through the shop from the thousands of wands piled from floor to ceiling, more palpable than any place he had been including Hogwarts. With a start, he decided that living in this cacophony of magic for so many years must be what had made Ollivander as strange as he was. He was sure that the sheer density of magic was distorting the local ley lines.

" _Good afternoon," said a soft voice. Harry jumped. An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop._

" _Hello," said Harry awkwardly._

" _Ah yes," said the man. "Yes, yes. I thought I'd be seeing you soon. Harry Potter." It wasn't a question. "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."_

No, his memory hadn't failed him; those silver eyes were _not_ blinking. Was he somehow related to Luna?

" _Your father, on the other hand, favoured a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favoured it—it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course."_

Seriously, had he got creepier? They were almost nose to nose, now.

" _And that's where…"_

 _Mr. Ollivander touched the lightning scar on Harry_ _'s forehead with a long, white finger._

" _I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that did it," he said softly. "Thirteen and a half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands… well, if I'd known what that wand was going out into the world to do…"_

Harry was _this close_ to throwing out a wandless Banishing Charm just to make Ollivander give him some personal space when the old man noticed Harry's escort.

"Ah, Professor McGonagall, how nice to see you again. Nine and a half inches, fir, and dragon heartstring, of course. Nice and firm—nothing better for transfiguration."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Ollivander," she said calmly.

"Well, now, Mr. Potter…let me see…which is your wand arm."

Harry held out his right arm, and Ollivander started up his enchanted tape measure. Although from what he had since learnt of wand lore, he didn't think those measurements had any discernible use. In any case, he didn't feel like waiting around for the old man to figure out the holly and phoenix wand again, so Harry found it for him. He reached out a tendril of magic to the one wand out of the thousands in the shop that was calling out to him. There was a faint rattle as it vibrated in its box.

"Hmm? What was that?" Ollivander walked back in the general direction of the sound. Harry plucked the strand of magic again, drawing his attention to a particular box.

"Could it be?" he said. "Such a reaction, I wonder…but yes, why not." He took the wand off the shelf and delicately handed it to Harry.

Harry smiled as he felt the familiar warmth of his old wand in his wand. He hadn't felt his magic align like this since it had been broken in Godric's Hollow. He waved it around and casually conjured a long line of light with the Fire-Writing Spell, with a flourish of sparks around it. For the first time in years, he really felt like things were looking up.

McGonagall looked on in surprise. That certainly _looked_ like a controlled spell, not beginner's burst of sparks, but Ollivander was too excited to notice.

"Oh, bravo!" he exclaimed. "And on the first try, too. I've rarely seen such a powerful connection…how curious, how very curious…"

Harry smirked slightly. "Let me guess; this wand means I have some grand destiny to fulfil or something?"

"Why…yes, I suppose so. Why do you say that, Mr. Potter?"

"I don't know. It just seemed like that would be just my luck."


	2. The Obligatory Time Travel Fic:Chapter 2

Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter in this universe. The ownership and, indeed, the existence of Harry Potter in other universes cannot be guaranteed.

A/N: I suppose I wasn't clear about it before, but I do have a second chapter for this story. This is the only other one, and since this is a more developed story, I have included a summary of where the rest of this story was going at the end of this chapter.

I'm travelling this week, so this is really all I had time to put together, but I am still working on the next _Animagus at War_ for next week.

* * *

 **The Obligatory Time Travel Fic: Chapter 2**

McGonagall delivered Harry and his new school supplies back to Privett Drive by side-along apparition. His Uncle looked about to raise an objection to his bringing Hedwig in the house, but Harry cut him off and simply said, "Don't worry, I'll clean up after her."

"See that you do, boy," Vernon said in a half-hearted attempt to sound threatening.

On Monday, the time for relaxing was over. Harry left the house and flagged down the Knight Bus to catch a ride to do some shopping of his own. First was a muggle clothing shop in London to buy himself a decent set of clothes, including some workout clothes. He would need to start up his old exercise routine tomorrow, both in case the Plan failed and he had to do some serious fighting again, and because he generally needed to get his mildly-underfed eleven-year-old body into shape.

Two hours later, when had bought as much as he could carry, he walked into Diagon Alley sharply dressed and wearing a fedora to cover his scar. (The other choices were a Stetson and a ball cap, both of which would have stood out more in the wizarding world.) He made a beeline for the luggage shop and purchased a five-compartment trunk, which was charmed featherlight. It wasn't cheap, but it had a lifetime warranty, so it should serve him well enough. He put his newly-bought clothes in the fourth compartment and started off down the Alley.

By the end of the day, he had acquired a mokeskin pouch for his belt, the best emergency healer's kit in the apothecary, a pair of Auror-grade omnioculars with night vision capability, a pile of new books from Flourish and Blotts, including the all-important Occlumency and Advanced Defence books, a selection of useful enemy-distracting pranks from Gambol and Japes joke shop, a backup wand and two duelling wrist holsters from Jimmy Kiddell's Wand Shop, dress robes and a dragon-hide coat from Twilfitt and Tattings, and finally, an emergency broomstick (only a _Comet 260_ ). The last one was against school rules, of course, but he was only in trouble if he got caught, and if he was lucky, he would never need most of this stuff.

A rising first-year student wandering alone buying so many expensive things raised some eyebrows, of course, but all he had to do was take off his hat, and all opposition seemed to melt away.

It was getting late when he finished, but he still had one more stop to make: the offices of the _Daily Prophet_.

"Hello, I'd like to speak to Rita Skeeter, please," he told the secretary.

The secretary rolled her eyes. "Do you have an appointment, young man?" she said patronisingly.

Harry lifted the brim of his hat. The secretary's eyes widened. "Of course, right away, sir." Harry decided he was having too much fun with this. She rushed off down the hall. Harry he some arguing in the background, and then a familiar annoying voice huffed, "This had better be good. I'm writing a delicious story about Rufus Scrimgeour—Oh my…"

"Hello, Ms. Skeeter, I'm Harry Potter."

Rita Skeeter was wearing her atrocious lime-green robes and large, square, jewelled glasses. "Mr. Potter, such a pleasure to meet you," she said, giving him a handshake that made him want to wash his hands. "Please, come into my office."

Harry smiled and followed her, sitting down across her desk.

"So, Mr. Potter, what brings you to the _Prophet?_ " she said eagerly, quill at the ready.

"I've been told you have a very good reputation in the wizarding press, Ms. Skeeter," Harry said. She nodded proudly. "Believe it or not, I've only known about the magical world for a few days. But I started reading all the books that talk about me, and I didn't like how they're all mostly made-up."

Rita's smile became just a little forced.

"So I asked Professor McGonagall for advice on what to do about it."

Her smile became a little more forced. Of course, his story was about as true as most of hers, namely, about twenty-five percent.

"Since you're so well read, Ms. Skeeter, I would like to offer you an exclusive interview."

Harry was sure Rita's eyes changed to galleon signs for a moment.

"Oh, I would be _happy_ to interview you, Mr. Potter—"

"Well, Professor McGonagall suggested a few conditions," Harry said innocently.

"…Such as?"

Harry turned his face hard and mature as the Soldier Harry rose to the surface, and Rita turned a couple shades paler. "You don't use a Quick-Quotes Quill, I get to review the story before you print it, and you don't go around trying to snoop into my life, because I _will_ have ways of finding out if you do." And since he was Harry Potter, Defeater of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, he could tell she believed him. He wished he'd thought to do that the first time around.

"Oh, of—of course. That won't be a problem," she said in a tone that failed to mask her unhappiness. "When were you thinking of having this interview? I can certainly clear my schedule for this evening."

"Well, if you don't mind," Harry said, putting his innocent child face back on, "I'd like to take some time to learn more about the magical world and to get settled in at Hogwarts first. I think I'd like to do the interview on the twenty-first of September. I know it's pretty far in advance…but I think it will be worth it. And who knows, if it goes well, there might be another interview in the cards for next spring."

Rita brightened again, pleased that, if nothing else, Harry knew how to speak her language. "Yes…I think the twenty-first of September will do just fine, Mr. Potter."

"It's a pleasure working with you, Ms. Skeeter." Harry left the office smiling knowingly to himself. _All according to Plan._

* * *

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _This is Hedwig. I got her so I can send letters in the magical world so if you want to write to me, you can send a letter with her. Or if you want to write later, you can send a letter by muggle post. I_ _'m at 4 Privett Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey._

 _I went back to Flourish and Blotts on Monday to get some more books. Professor McGonagall says I_ _'m from one of the important old families, and I should know about politics and stuff, so I got a couple of magical law books. I think you should take a look at them. It turns out that even though witches and wizards under 17 aren't allowed to do magic outside school, they don't enforce it in wizarding families. The parents are supposed to do it, but not all of them do. And they also don't enforce it against wandless magic because it looks the same as accidental magic. Wandless magic is supposed to be really hard, but I figure we've all done accidental magic without a wand, so maybe we can learn it. I found a book about it, but it looks really complicated. Maybe you can figure it out._

 _I_ _'m doing better now. My aunt and uncle actually weren't too bad when I explained things to them, and I've got enough reading to keep me busy for the next month. Anyway, I'm sure you're really busy trying to memorise your course books or something. Don't work too hard. There'll be plenty of time for that at school. See you in September._

 _Your friend,_

 _Harry Potter_

 _P.S. Hedwig really likes bacon._

Hermione nearly fainted when she saw Harry had signed his letter "Your friend." She didn't have any really close friends at school, and now, here was a boy she'd only just met wanting to be her friend? And he was the Boy-Who-Lived for heaven's sake! He hadn't even mentioned that until he'd had to. Just what kind of boy was Harry Potter? And how did _he_ know she was trying to memorise her course books? Was she really that obvious? And then, of course, there were the other things he'd told her. If they turned out to be true…

"So, Hedwig, you like bacon?" she said happily as she made her mental list of things to investigate.

* * *

Harry spent most of the time until the first of September working on his exercise routine and brushing up on his reading. First year classes would be trivially easy, but he would still have to slog through all those essays. He only took a few trips out on the Knight Bus, though he did go out for a nice dinner alone on his birthday. He was pleased to find that Professor McGonagall had sent him a box of Honeydukes chocolate for his birthday, and Hagrid had somehow found out and sent him a small cake.

Exercising was slow going, starting from basically nothing as he was. It was the most frustrating part of coming back in time. Even for his age, his body just wouldn't respond like it did before. Luckily, his relatives weren't giving him any trouble beyond a little griping as long as he stayed out of their way. They didn't even stand in the way of his getting as much as he wanted to eat. They had raised a bit of a fuss when they saw the new clothes, but he explained that he had dipped into his inheritance, and no, he didn't know he had an inheritance before, and no, they didn't have access, but he did give them a few pounds for room and board for the month of August. It was a small price to pay for some peace and quiet.

On the morning of the first of September, Harry loaded up his trunk, donned his hat, and headed downstairs to face his relatives, he hoped, for the last time.

"Hello, Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, Dudley," he said. "I'm going off to Hogwarts this morning. If you really want to contact me, you can post a letter to Harry Potter at Hogwarts, and it'll go through. However, if all goes well, you'll never have to see or hear from me again."

"Fine by me," Uncle Vernon said gruffly. "Have a nice life, boy."

"I just wanted to thank you."

Uncle Vernon choked on his orange juice. "What did you say?"

"As unpleasant as you've made the last ten years for me, letting me stay here has kept me alive. Aunt Petunia knows this. She also knows that all of you are also magically protected by my being here. Those protections will last another year, at which time, again, if all goes well, they will no longer be needed. The dark wizard they're protecting you from will be gone. You gave me houseroom here, however grudgingly, and for that much, I thank you. Goodbye." He turned to leave.

"Harry…" Aunt Petunia called after him.

He looked back at her and raised a single eyebrow. The words seemed to hang on her lips, as if she just couldn't bring herself to say what she wanted to say. Finally, she settled on, "Be careful."

He nodded slightly and left. He called for the Knight Bus and rode up to Kings Cross, feeling a weight lifted off his shoulders. He had washed his hands of his relatives. They had brought anything that came afterwards on themselves. Even his aunt couldn't apologise to him for her sister's sake when he gave her the perfect opportunity, so he was through with them. At least as long as a certain next step worked out, and even if it didn't, there was more than one way to keep safe from Tommy Boy. That was one thing he'd learnt very well in his years on the run.

He arrived at the station early, grabbed a copy of the _Prophet_ , and waited. Sure enough, a little while later, he saw a bushy-haired girl, already in her Hogwarts robes, eagerly running toward the train.

"Hey, Hermione, what's up?" he called.

She turned and spotted him. "Harry! Hi!" She ran over to him, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "Um, nice hat?"

"Thanks. Famous wizard, and all that."

"Oh, right." She looked over the rest of his outfit. "Are those _all_ new clothes?"

"Yeah. My aunt and uncle just gave me hand-me-downs from my cousin—he's my age, but he's huge. I found out I had an inheritance from my parents, so I went and got some new stuff."

"That's nice."

"Hello, Harry, how have you been?" Mrs. Granger asked, catching up with her daughter.

"Quite well, Mrs. Granger," he replied. "Hermione, how was the rest of your summer?"

"It was good—I did a _lot_ of reading. I, um…I gave up trying to memorise my course books and looked up those other books you mentioned. It's really unfair how purebloods basically get a free pass on practising magic out of school, so I wanted to try the wandless magic, but I couldn't get it to work."

That wasn't surprising, since she'd only had a month. "Well, don't worry. I'm sure you'll get it if you keep working at it."

"Thanks," she said with a shy smile. "Shouldn't we get on the train, Harry?"

"Huh? Uh, yeah, in a minute," he said, scanning the platform as he kept doing every couple of minutes.

"Are you looking for someone?" Hermione asked.

"Well, there's a family that's supposed to be coming through here that I wanted to meet. They shouldn't be hard to spot—just look for a whole bunch of people with red hair."

She looking around the platform herself. Her parents also looked around, curious to see what would be so special about this particular family. After a few more minutes of idle chatting, they spotted them. There they were: the Weasleys. Watching unobtrusively from under the brim of his hat, he let his eyes rove from one face to the next. There was little Ginny, who had dreamed of marrying the Great Harry Potter since she was six, who had been the only successful girlfriend he'd ever had, and now probably never would be again, after she was cut down by Bellatrix Lestrange's Killing Curse, and he was now more than twice her age. Molly, who had gone toe to toe with Bellatrix for revenge and predictably died in five seconds flat; Percy, who had been lost the day the Ministry fell; Fred and George, both killed in the explosion on the seventh floor of Hogwarts; and Ron, his best friend for all those years who, so far as he knew, had been eaten alive by Fenrir Greyback and his pack that fateful day.

Seeing all of them alive and whole again was almost too much for him to take, but he pressed on. "Excuse me," he said, walking up to them. "Are you the Weasleys?"

"Why, yes," Molly said in surprise. "Do we know you?"

"No, but I've heard some about you. This is my friend, Hermione Granger, and I'm…well…" He lifted the brim of his hat.

All of the boys gasped in surprise, and Ginny squeaked loudly and collapsed against her mother.

"Why, Harry Potter—it's an honour to meet you," Molly said, shaking his hand.

"Thanks. Hermione, this is the Weasley Family," Harry continued. "Professor McGonagall told me a little about them. Arthur Weasley is working on a Muggle Protection Act in the Wizengamot."

"Oh, really?" Mr. Granger said. "We're glad to hear that. We're new to the magical world, and to be honest, the more Hermione's been reading about magical law, the less comfortable we've been with it."

"Well, Arthur is very dedicated to his work," Molly said. "And not all of us are like the people who passed those old laws. My name is Molly. We're pleased to meet you. Oh, and this is Percy—he'll be a prefect this year. My twins are Fred and George—"

"Don't bother asking which is which," Percy said in annoyance. "They'll only confuse you."

"Ronald is starting at Hogwarts this year, too, and the little one is Ginny. She'll be going next year."

"Hi…" Ginny said softly, waving at Harry.

"Blimey, you really are him," Ron said. "So that's where You-Know-Who—"

"Ronald!" Molly scolded.

"Sorry."

Harry had almost forgotten how rough around the edges Ron was at this age. He'd had to grow up a lot after his father was killed in the Department of Mysteries. He hoped he could get him to tone it down sooner, but it would be a hard task. He shook hands with all of the Weasleys, and Hermione and her parents introduced themselves before they all boarded the train.

Once on board, Percy and the Twins ran off to do their own things, while Harry, Ron, and Hermione got a compartment together. They settled in quickly, and Hermione pulled out a book—Harry couldn't help but smile at that—although she didn't start reading, which boded reasonably well. She also didn't fail to miss his unusual trunk.

"Harry," Hermione asked, "why does that trunk have five locks?"

"Because it has five compartments," he said simply. "I had to make room for all the extra books." He pulled the master key from around his neck and opened the fourth compartment, revealing his nice new muggle and wizard wardrobe. "Oh, sorry, wrong one." He closed the trunk and opened the third compartment—both of them appeared to fill the entire space—revealing his books. Hermione looked in surprise at the magical trunk and eyed the books hungrily.

"Wicked," Ron said. "What's in the others?"

He showed them the second compartment which contained his potions supplies, healer's kit, and related items, and the first compartment, which contained the rest of his school supplies, some of his prank items, and other odds and ends. "The fifth one's empty," he lied. The fifth compartment was for things he wanted to keep secret, including his broomstick, the rest of his prank stash, some questionable potions he had purchased in Knockturn Alley, and eventually his invisibility cloak and the Marauder's Map.

But even without the fifth compartment, Hermione noticed how many things he had beyond the school supplies list. "Harry, how did you get all this stuff?" she asked.

"Well, I went to the bank, and it turns out…I'm rich."

"This is nuts!" Ron said. "It must be nice having that kind of money."

Harry was determined to try to defuse this early. "Well, I guess I'm just trying to catch up," he said. "I didn't even know about that money until a month ago. Besides, I'd trade it all in a heartbeat to have a real family like yours. All I have is an aunt and uncle who can't stand me and couldn't stand my parents, and a cousin who likes to beat me up except he's too slow to catch me. They always made me wear his old clothes, and gave him all the best stuff, so I had to replace all of it anyway."

Hermione looked a little green at these revelations, but Ron kept going: "Well, I have to wear all my brothers' old clothes."

"Yeah, but at least yours fit. You should see how huge Dudley is."

"Hmm…" Ron said. "I guess, but still, I got stuck with Charlie's old wand after he got a new one for his job, and Percy gave me his old rat after Mum and Dad gave him an owl."

Ron reached into his jacket and pulled out a fat grey rat that lay half-asleep in his hand.

Harry froze. There he was—the rat that had sold out Sirius, brought Tommy Boy back to life, tormented Luna in the Malfoys' cellar, and, finally, turned his back on his life debt to Harry. In the end, Ron had just barely managed to kill him before he strangled Harry with that silver hand. Harry wanted to kill the rat right then and there—well, maybe not kill him, but definitely hurt him, or at least expose him. But he couldn't. Not yet. Not until he had the backup to do it.

The bleary-eyed rat blinked awake and stared warily at Harry, but he bit his tongue and managed to keep his face neutral. _Two days, Peter_ , he thought. _Two days is all you_ _'re getting._

"He's useless," Ron complained. "All he does is sleep. Fred and George gave me a spell to turn him yellow to make him more interesting. You wanna see?"

Harry smirked to himself and said, "Sure." Hermione nodded eagerly.

Ron drew his older brother's battered wand and cleared his throat: " _Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, turn this stupid, fat rat yellow_!"

Scabbers stubbornly remained grey.

"Uh, I don't think that's a real spell, mate," Harry said. "Here, let me try." He drew his own wand and deliberately poked Scabbers with it. " _Colovaria_ ," he incanted.

In a blink, Scabbers's fur turned a bright sunflower-yellow from nose to tail.

 _Squeak!_ The rat started running around in little circles, trying to figure out what to do about his new hairstyle. Harry and Ron both laughed at his antics.

"Wow, that was pretty good," Ron said, thankfully not questioning how Harry knew the Colour-Change Charm already.

"I don't think he likes it much," Hermione protested.

"It's okay," Harry said. "It'll wear off after a while…I think…I don't quite remember."

Scabbers collapsed limply over Ron's leg.

The train ride was mostly uneventful. Neville stopped by, looking for his toad, but Harry encouraged him to go ask a prefect to help and then come back to talk, and when the trolley stopped by, Harry treated all three of them. Neville was one of those people who was really hard to see this young—shy, lacking confidence, a little pudgy and not in any kind of shape, horrifically clumsy, and honestly not very competent. You would never guess he would grow up to become one of the fiercest warriors in the Resistance. Alas, like so many, he didn't survive Germany. Tommy Boy broke Grindelwald out of Nurmengard and… _did something_ to him. Harry still shuddered thinking about it.

In any case, he really hoped he could build Neville up sooner this time around. Even with no war, that confidence would serve him well in life.

Of course, the one great disruption of the day occurred when Draco Malfoy swaggered into the compartment with his two minions.

Draco Malfoy. It was odd, Harry thought. Malfoy had been a pretty serious contender as a Death Eater, but right now, he was just a smug, spoilt eleven-year-old punk kid who thought he was better than everyone else. He wasn't even that great at magic—not even worth the time of day. Harry could barely fathom how he had ever let eleven-year-old Draco Malfoy intimidate him, even when he was eleven himself.

"They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. Is it you?" Malfoy said.

"Nope. I think he might be in the next one."

Malfoy looked at him suspiciously. After all, not many people wore hats like his. "I already checked the next one," he said smugly. "You mind taking off your hat and proving it?"

"Yes, I do mind, Mr…"

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy." He sized up Harry's two friends. "And you don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort, Potter. I—"

"Quite right," Harry said. "Good afternoon." He held up a hand and pushed the three of them out of his compartment with a wandless Banishing Charm and shut the door before they could come back in. Then he drew his wand and cast ' _Colloportus_ ' on the door. Malfoy and his goons banged on the door, but Harry just waved serenely at them through the window until they gave up.

Hermione, Ron, and Neville were shocked. "Harry, how did you do that?" Hermione asked.

Harry chortled and said, "Magic." He'd been waiting for a chance to use that one for years.

She glared at him, and he had to struggle not to laugh because it just looked so cute coming from an eleven-year-old Hermione. "I know _that_ ," she said. "How did you throw them out without a wand? You can't possibly have got that good at wandless magic that fast."

"Well, I think I inherited a talent for it from my mother," he said truthfully. "Plus, I've only really been practising pushing things around like in _Star Wars_." That part was a lie, but those really were very useful spells.

Hermione seemed to accept his explanation, although she still watched him suspiciously. Soon, the sky grew dark, and they pulled into Hogsmeade station and disembarked from the train. The lone lantern bobbed high above the heads of the students, and a familiar voice called out, "Firs' years! Firs' years over here!" _Good old Hagrid_ , Harry thought, even as he realised just how big a gamble he was taking here, being back at Hogwarts. He started to despair of getting through this night without turning into an emotional mess. Hagrid had stayed with him in the flight across Europe, loyal to the end, until he was finally struck down in Poland fighting the last of his Giant brethren. And here he was, leading the first years to the castle, just like the old days.

 _No, it still_ is _the old days_ , Harry had to keep reminding himself.

"Well, look who it is," Hagrid boomed when he spotted him. "Harry Potter. Las' time I saw yeh, yeh was jus' a little baby."

"You must be Hagrid," Harry greeted him warmly. "Professor McGonagall told me about you. Pleased to meet you."

"Aye, same teh yeh, Harry. Well, better get movin'."

Hagrid led them up the winding forest path. Harry was shaking in anticipation of what he would see. Finally, they rounded the last bend, and there it was: Hogwarts Castle in all its glory, standing high and seemingly unassailable on a rock overlooking the Black Lake, its many turrets and towers gleaming in the night. At last, for the first time since he'd come back, Harry was completely overcome with emotion, and he collapsed to his knees in sobs. The last time he had seen Hogwarts, it was in ruins, under Tommy Boy's control, and littered with the bodies of his friends.

"Harry?" Hermione whispered urgently. "Harry, are you okay?"

"It's so beautiful…" he said. With difficulty, he pulled his eyes away from the sight and saw the worry etched on Hermione's face. "I…I told you things haven't gone well in my life…I…I never dreamed I would live in someplace so beautiful…I'm sorry. I don't normally…"

Hermione's own eyes were glistening at that pronouncement themselves. "It's okay, Harry," she said. she pulled him to his feet, supporting one arm with her shoulders, and said, "Come on, we have to go."

He nodded and staggered on to the boats, allowing Hermione to help him along. At the rate he was going he was going to get a reputation of being emotionally unstable even faster than last time, or just a plain crybaby, despite what he did to Malfoy, but as long as he kept his friends safe, he really didn't care. So he stuck close to his three friends, tried to engage all of them, and found Neville's toad for him again as he tried not to break down a second time as they made their way into the school.

He'd forgotten how much bigger the castle was at this age, how much brighter and more wondrous the Great Hall was. The Enchanted Ceiling showed a black sky pierced through with stars, and floating candles filled the Hall from floor to ceiling. Albus Dumbledore was sitting on his golden throne, alive and well, his hand whole and healthy, and with only the barest hint of the darkness and worry that had increasingly lined his face as Harry's Hogwarts years progressed. The old wizard was far, _far_ from perfect, but in the end, he was the only thing holding magical Britain together, and Harry had always respected him for that much.

Professor McGonagall brought out the Sorting Hat, and the Sorting was underway. Everything went the same as before, except that after some encouraging words from Harry, Neville was much quicker to accept the Hat's assignment of Gryffindor. And then, McGonagall spoke the long-awaited words: "Potter, Harry."

Harry stepped forward slowly. It was all too easy to play the part of the nervous first year. After all, the Hat was the one being in the world he couldn't hide from. He sat on the high stool, and dropped the Sorting Hat down so that its brim covered his eyes.

"Well, well, well, Mr. Potter," the Hat's voice sounded in his head. "This _is_ unusual. It's been a _very_ long time since this has happened."

"You mean this has happened before?" Harry whispered in shock.

"Come now, Mr. Potter, you're familiar with the muggle world. Haven't you heard of the legend that Merlin lived backward in time?"

"What, _that_?"

The Hat laughed at him. "Most legends contain a grain of truth, you know. So where to put you, Mr. Potter?"

"Most of the people I want to help here are in Gryffindor," Harry said. "And a certain rat I need to catch."

"Ah, I see you have an entire plan worked out this time. For what its worth, I think it will work if you are very careful, but may I say, how very Slytherin of you."

Harry's pulse quickened: "I will cut holes for ears and stick you on one of the thestrals."

Fortunately, rather than taking the threat personally, the Hat laughed again: "Hotheaded and reckless as ever, aren't you, Mr. Potter? Some things never change. You're definitely a—GRYFFINDOR!"

Harry smiled with relief and jumped down from the stool and took his seat next to Hermione. _Just like old_ _—current—times_ , he thought. Dumbledore nodded kindly to him, and Hagrid flashed him a thumbs up.

The Welcome Feast was even better than he remembered. He hadn't had a meal this good since Easter of sixth year—war tended to do that to you. He sampled everything, chatted with everyone around him, and grabbed an extra treacle tart for later before Dumbledore made his start of term announcements, including the one about Fluffy. All in all, it was simply…magical. And while he didn't like going to bed with Wormtail in the room, it had been fine for three years before, so he could manage two nights. Besides, he was more preoccupied with how wonderful it felt to be back in his old four-poster bed again and how good it was that things had gone perfectly so far.

All according to Plan.

* * *

 **Summary**

This story would have gone pretty much how you expect from this point. Harry captures Pettigrew and gets Sirius freed. He tells Sirius about his time travel because Sirius can get a hold of most of the horcruxes without raising suspicion. Meanwhile, Harry starts befriending the basilisk, whom I named Tiamat, and he uses one of her fangs to destroy the diadem. He also ensures that Hermione is not endangered on Halloween.

Harry doesn't care much for Dumbledore in this story because his attitude towards him was essentially frozen at his resentful, mid-Book 7 stage. Also, he's worried about Dumbledore screwing up the Plan, so he avoids Dumbledore as much as possible. To further stick it to Dumbldore and improve the school, he calls out Snape, Binns, Burbage, and Trelawney in a letter-writing campaign to the _Daily Prophet_ to get them replaced, and he eventually gets Dumbledore himself sacked.

As he wins Tiamat's trust, Harry introduces Hermione to her to give her a better perspective on muggle-borns, and he prompts Hermione to learn Occlumency so he can tell her about his time travel. He also becomes good friends with Tonks while staying at Grimmauld Place for Christmas. He is especially eager to tell Tonks about his time travel because she is one of the few people he knows who is close to his mental age. If I ever bothered to show what happens in later years, this would have become a Harry/Tonks story.

Harry defeats Quirrellmort at the end of the year, and by this point, all of the horcruxes have been destroyed except the diary and the one in Harry's head. He retrieves the diary from Lucius when he tries to give it to Ginny, and then he gets rid of the one in his head using a ritual invented in the future, which kills Voldemort for good immediately. Thus, everything is solved before his second year begins, and he can enjoy the rest of his schooling.


	3. Forged in Fire: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Parts of this chapter have been quoted from _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_.

A/N: Yes, there are a lot of quotes in this chapter. But I did it for stylistic reasons, interspersing the canon text with my own changes. This is a special case for this chapter only, and it won't continue in the rest of the story.

* * *

 **Introduction**

When I started writing fanfiction, I was on a bit of a soul bond kick. It's a common trope, and I feel like it was even more common at the time, back in 2013, but I never really saw it done the way I thought it should be done. I eventually found _The Amplitude, Frequency, and Resistance of the Soul Bond_ , which is by far the best soul bond story out there, though sadly incomplete. But at the time, I had two ideas for soul bond stories of my own (both being Harry/Hermione fics). One of them would have started in first year, and it gradually morphed into a massively-AU epic with lots of characters having special abilities, soul bonds being semi-common, and a lot of effort put in to make the magical world seem much more exotic than in canon. The problem with that one was that it just got too big to handle. It could have been a great story, but it was too much to ask for me to completely outline and write a massively-AU seven-year story to do it justice.

This chapter was my second, far less ambitious idea for a soul bond story, _Forged in Fire_ , which begins at the end of fifth year. There's not much to say about this one because I had precisely the opposite problem with it: it wasn't ambitious enough. It would have pretty much been a canon rehash of Books 6 and 7 aside from the character development of Harry and Hermione with the bond. Reading over my outline again, many of the other changes I made to the plot wound up being incorporated into _Lady Archimedes_ , even though that's _not_ a Harry/Hermione story, so there's even less reason to pick it up again. Even so, for completeness, I've included it in this anthology.

Soul bonds were supposed to be rare, but not completely unknown in this story. A large part of the character development would have been Harry and Hermione struggling with the bond and showing how it was really more trouble than it was worth, but eventually making it work for them. The title was meant to be taken from a old poem in-story that describes the soul bond phenomenon.

This is the only chapter I have for this story.

* * *

 **Forged in Fire: Chapter 1**

" _Well, Harry," said Dumbledore, finally turning away from the baby bird, "you will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer lasting damage from the night's events."_

(Hermione struck by Dolohov's purple curse and falling to the floor unconscious.)

 _Harry tried to say,_ _"Good," but no sound came out. It seemed to him that Dumbledore was reminding him of the amount of damage he had caused, and although Dumbledore was for once looking at him directly, and although his expression was kindly rather than accusatory, Harry could not bear to meet his eyes._

(Ron being strangled by a disembodied brain.)

" _Madam Pomfrey is patching everybody up," said Dumbledore. "Nymphadora Tonks may need to spend a little time in St. Mungo's, but it seems she will make a full recovery."_

(Tonks tumbling head over heels down rows of hard, stone seats.)

 _Harry contented himself with nodding at the carpet, which was growing lighter as the sky outside grew paler. He was sure all the portraits around the room were listening closely to every word Dumbledore spoke, wondering where Dumbledore and Harry had been, and why there had been injuries._

" _I know how you're feeling, Harry," said Dumbledore very quietly._

(Sirius falling through Veil.)

" _No, you don't," said Harry, and his voice was suddenly loud and strong; white-hot anger leapt inside him; Dumbledore knew nothing about his feelings._

(There were no signs in the Department of Mysteries. No little bronze plaque labelled "DEATH" to warn them.)

" _You see, Dumbledore?" said Phineas Nigellus slyly. "Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own—"_

(Only the fact that not all of them could see it.)

" _That's enough, Phineas," said Dumbledore._

(Like the thestrals.)

 _Harry turned his back on Dumbledore and stared determinedly out of the window. He could see the Quidditch stadium in the distance. Sirius had appeared there once, disguised as the shaggy black dog, so he could watch Harry play_ _… he had probably come to see whether Harry was as good as James had been… Harry had never asked him…_

" _There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry," said Dumbledore's voice. "On the contrary… the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."_

 _Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words._

" _My greatest strength, is it?" said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. "You haven't got a clue… you don't know…"_

" _What don't I know?" asked Dumbledore calmly._

 _It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage._

" _I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?"_

" _Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human—"_

" _THEN—I—DON'T—WANT—TO—BE—HUMAN!" Harry roared, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindlelegged table beside him and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, "Really!"_

It wasn't even about Sirius anymore, though he was still the focus of it. It was something even bigger than that.

" _I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANY MORE—"_

And he truly didn't, though not in the way Dumbledore seemed to think. Fifteen years of pent up rage, suppressed by fear and shame and common decorum, finally broke free, because there was no will left in him to hold it back.

 _He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that, too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions._

" _You do care," said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."_

He couldn't stop the memories. They came unbidden, now. Losing Sirius was only the last, most painful straw.

(Lies and slander spewed against him by everyone with any real power for a solid year.)

" _I—DON'T!" Harry screamed, so loudly that he felt his throat might tear, and for a second he wanted to rush at Dumbledore and break him, too; shatter that calm old face, shake him, hurt him, make him feel some tiny part of the horror inside himself._

("I must not tell lies' carved into his hand with scars that by now might never fade.)

" _Oh, yes, you do," said Dumbledore, still more calmly. "You have now lost your mother, your father, and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care."_

(Very nearly dying _under Dumbledore_ _'s watch_ no fewer than sixteen times in five years—he'd counted.)

" _YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL!" Harry roared. "YOU—STANDING THERE—YOU—" But words were no longer enough, smashing things was no more help; he wanted to run, he wanted to keep running and never look back, he wanted to be somewhere he could not see the clear blue eyes staring at him, that hatefully calm old face. He turned on his heel and ran to the door, seized the doorknob again and wrenched at it._

 _But the door would not open._

Harry's blood ran cold.

(Being fed through a cat flap with bars on his windows.)

 _Harry turned back to Dumbledore._

" _Let me out," he said. He was shaking from head to foot._

" _No," said Dumbledore simply._

(Being made to sleep in a damn _coat cupboard_ for ten years.)

 _For a few seconds they stared at each other._

" _Let me out," Harry said again._

" _No," Dumbledore repeated._

(Being worked like a bloody house elf for most of those ten years.)

" _If you don't—if you keep me in here—if you don't let me—"_

(Walking out on his uncle after he blew up Aunt Marge—the first time he had seen Sirius.)

" _By all means continue destroying my possessions," said Dumbledore serenely. "I daresay I have too many."_

(Sirius falling through the Veil.)

 _He walked around his desk and sat down, behind it, watching Harry._

" _Let me out," Harry said yet again, in a voice that was cold and almost as calm as Dumbledore's._

" _Not until I have had my say," said Dumbledore._

" _Do you—do you think I want to—do you think I give a—I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO SAY!" Harry roared. "I don't want to hear anything you've got to say!"_

" _You will," said Dumbledore steadily. "Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it."_

(An old, bearded man putting him in that house in the first place.)

Not angry _enough?_ Oh, he'd earned it, alright. The whole damn magical world had earned it. A world that had given him everything he'd ever wanted and then snatched it away just as fast. His two best and closest friends were in the infirmary recovering from injuries he didn't even _understand_. His godfather, the _one_ adult he had ever met who'd had the consideration to offer him a better life, was now dead—not even struck down, but literally _fallen_ out of the world. And what had Dumbledore ever done but shove him off on a family who hated him and disappeared almost every time Harry needed him most?

"LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!" Harry picked up one of silver instruments and hurled it directly at the Dumbledore's head, but the old man dodged, and he charged him, leaping over the desk.

" _Incarcerous_."

The next thing Harry knew, he was tied to the chair sitting across from Dumbledore. He screamed and struggled against the bonds, feeling his magic flare in anguish. The ropes began to smolder around his wrists.

" _Aguamenti_."

The ropes turned wet and steaming and refused to burn further.

"My apologies. I would rather not have to restrain you this way, Harry, but _I owe you an explanation,_ _" said Dumbledore. "An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young… and I seem to have forgotten, lately…"_

And Dumbledore told him. He told him how he knew Voldemort would try to trick Harry. How he had kept his distance from Harry to withhold opportunities for Voldemort to advance his schemes. How Kreacher had lied to Harry and worked for Voldemort directly. How Dumbledore had dismissed the disaster that was Snape's Occlumency lessons.

And somehow, Harry just couldn't bring himself to care. It was just more fuel on a fire that had already gone out of control. It paled in comparison with the hole that was torn through his chest by losing Sirius…or even with his own idiocy at leading his friends into what should have been certain death.

(Luna being thrown over a desk and falling still.)

And then Dumbledore told him about the blood wards at Number Four Privett Drive. How his relatives had kept him alive just by letting him live in their house—and, he mentally added, giving him precisely nothing else of value. How Dumbledore had _known_ all along how awful his relatives were. And then, the hated words:

" _I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed."_

"You _cared_ about me too much?" Harry growled out. Three chirping instruments shattered around him under his uncontrolled magic. "If you cared about me so much, why didn't you bother checking up on me in that house for fourteen years."

"Harry, I—"

"Another mistake. That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? You know what? Forget it. Go on, Professor; tell me why Voldemort wanted to kill me."

(Hermione collapsing under a curse that Harry had never seen nor heard tell of.)

" _Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a child because of a prophecy made shortly before your birth. He knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing he was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill you backfired. And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy you."_

("If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy.")

 _The sun had risen fully now: Dumbledore_ _'s office was bathed in it. The glass case in which the sword of Godric Gryffindor resided gleamed white and opaque, the fragments of the instruments Harry had thrown to the floor glistened like raindrops, and behind him, the baby Fawkes made soft chirruping noises in his nest of ashes._

" _The prophecy's smashed," Harry said blankly. "I was pulling Neville up those benches in the—the room where the archway was, and I ripped his robes and it fell…"_

(Sirius falling through the Veil.)

" _The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly—"_

" _Who heard it?" asked Harry, though he thought he knew the answer already._

(Hermione lying limp in Neville's arms.)

" _I did," said Dumbledore. "On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."_

 _Dumbledore got to his feet and walked past Harry to the black cabinet that stood beside Fawkes_ _'s perch. He bent down, slid back a catch and took from inside it the shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edges, in which Harry had seen his father tormenting Snape. Dumbledore walked back to the desk, placed the Pensieve upon it, and raised his wand to his own temple. From it, he withdrew silvery, gossamer-fine strands of thought clinging to the wand and deposited them into the basin. He sat back down behind his desk and watched his thoughts swirl and drift inside the Pensieve for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he raised his wand and prodded the silvery substance with its tip._

 _A figure rose out of it, draped in shawls, her eyes magnified to enormous size behind her glasses, and she revolved slowly; her feet in the basin. But when Sybill Trelawney spoke, it was not in her usual ethereal, mystic voice, but in the harsh, hoarse tones Harry had heard her use once before:_

" _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"_

(Arthur Weasley nearly dying to protect those words.)

It might have been Neville, Dumbledore said.

(Neville's parents lying insensible in St. Mungo's.)

But the curse Harry received had marked him. And Voldemort still didn't know that Harry had a power he knew not.

(Sirius falling through the Veil.)

And Harry didn't believe it for a second.

(Hermione had got by far the worst of it, of the ones who'd lived.)

Dumbledore claimed it was love.

(Sirius…)

But right now, all it was doing was causing him pain.

(Hermione…)

And now one of them would have to kill the other, in the end.

"Hermione…" he whispered.

"Will make a full recovery, I assure you," Dumbledore said. "Though she is quite lucky to have landed that _Silencio_ on Dolohov."

"Please let me go, sir. I want to see her," he said, still whispering. He was too tired to be angry anymore.

Dumbledore waved his wand. The ropes vanished, and Harry heard the click of the office door unlocking behind him. He got up to leave.

"Harry…"

He looked back. A single tear was trickling down the old man's face. "This will probably not mean much to you now," he said, "but _you may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess_ _… that I rather thought… you had enough responsibility to be going on with."_

Harry considered telling Dumbledore where to shove it, but he was too tired for another fight. He left the office in silence.

* * *

Harry wearily strode into the hospital wing and took stock of the situation. Ginny and Neville were already healed, while Luna, he guessed would need to rest overnight. Ginny sat by her brother's bedside; Ron's arms and chest were heavily bandaged, but he seemed to be resting peacefully. Neville sat dozing between Luna and Hermione.

Hermione lay shifting slowly on her bed in obvious pain. She didn't have any visible injuries, but the curse must have done quite a number on her. Numerous potion bottles were lined up on her bedside table. Harry took one step toward her, only to be cut off by Madam Pomfrey jumping in front of him.

"Ah, Mr. Potter, about time you got here," the mediwitch said, waving diagnostic spells.

"I'm fine," he pushed past her.

"Mr. Potter, you've been hit with multiple curses and possessed by You-Know-Who himself. You need to—"

"I'm. Fine." Pomfrey backed off when he shot her a death glare that beat even her own. "Excuse me, ma'am," he forced himself to apologise. "I'm here to see my friends."

Pomfrey gave him a heavy sigh. "Very well, Mr. Potter."

Harry pulled up a chair up to Hermione's bedside as the others waved to him. None of them dared speak though. They all knew about Sirius by now, and they weren't about to risk it after he successfully told off Poppy Pomfrey. There would be time to talk with them later. Right now, he only craved the company of the one friend who needed him most.

He stepped back for a moment and turned back to the mediwitch. "Madam Pomfrey, can you tell me…what actually hit her?"

Pomfrey frowned, but she answered, barely above a whisper. "It's called the Organ-Cutting Curse. It's Antonin Dolohov's personal invention. Both of her lungs, her stomach, spleen, and pancreas were all seriously damaged. I can fix all of them, but she'll need an intensive potions regimen and at least three weeks to recover completely. Dark curses take a long time to heal, and I'm sorry; I can't do much for the pain until she's stronger…It's a very good thing she managed to silence Dolohov, Mr. Potter. At full power, that curse causes paralysis, since the spinal cord is, technically, an organ."

Harry grew pale and swallowed hard, knowing full well what Madam Pomfrey had left out: at full power, she probably wouldn't have lived long enough to get help. He nodded and answered her, "Thank you."

He sat next to his friend and gently took her hand. "Hermione…I'm here," he whispered.

Hermione's eyes fluttered open part way, and she looked up, squinting at him. Through a grimace of pain, the corners of her mouth turned up slightly.

Harry leaned closer to her face, and tears filled his eyes. He'd come so close to losing her. She'd saved his life three times directly and many more times with her brains, and more importantly, she was one of the best friends he'd ever had, and he'd nearly lost her.

"I was so worried about you. I thought that Dolohov—"

For the first time all morning, his voice completely choked. He couldn't even think about it. Hermione let out a soft sigh that might have been his name and feebly stroked his hand with her fingers. Through her pain, he could see the reassuring look in her eyes.

That was Hermione, alright. Even when she could barely move, she was still thinking of him first. He knew too well that she was the only other person besides Sirius who had stuck by him through everything, even when everyone else was against him. Even when _Ron_ was against him. And even when they'd fought, it was usually because she was looking out for him, and he was just being stubborn about it.

"I never could have made it if I'd lost you, too."

She gave him a sad half-smile.

"Hell, I'd never have survived first year without you."

She gave a tiny snort and winced in pain as she tried to shake her head in denial.

"No really…" He leaned a little closer to her face. He reached one hand up and brushed a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes. She closed her eyes contentedly. Harry sat there for a while, holding her hand in his, just watching her. Knowing she was going to be okay, well, it was the only thing that made him think things could ever be close to alright again. And seeing her so close—he wondered why he'd never noticed before—whatever she'd done for the Yule Ball last year must have stuck, and not just fixing her teeth. She was a far cry from the uptight bookworm he'd met all those years ago.

"Hermione, have I ever told you how beautiful you are?" he whispered practically into her ear. He didn't notice Neville staring at him strangely.

Her eyes flew open in disbelief—those chocolate brown eyes that he could just get lost in. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Harry wondered where all of this was coming from all of a sudden, but he'd been through far too much in the past twenty-four hours to care right now.

"You really are, you know."

Hermione's face broke into a confused smile, obviously torn between accepting the compliment and thinking her best friend had gone mad.

"You okay over there?" Ginny said.

Harry didn't hear her. The rest of the room seemed to melt away. He hesitated, hovering just inches above Hermione's face, trying to come to terms with a desire that part of him didn't want to name. Part of him still wanted to say she was his best friend, and that was it. But in his heart, he knew it wasn't true anymore—probably hadn't been since Valentine's Day at the latest—and that objecting part seemed far more distant now.

 _I_ _'ve had no control of my life for_ far _too long_.

With that thought, he closed the distance and lightly kissed her lips.

Hermione sucked in a deep breath, her pain seemingly momentarily forgotten. Harry started to pull away in surprise, but she reached up shakily with her free hand and pulled his head toward toward her.

"Harry?" Ginny said in shock.

"Harry?" Ron squeaked.

"Hermione?" Neville said.

A strange white glow emanating from Hermione's chest.

"What's happening?" Ginny got up and approached the couple. She gasped in surprise when she saw a brilliant white line across Hermione's chest glowing where Dolohov's curse had hit her, and growing brighter.

"Madam Pomfrey!" Ginny called.

Hermione reached up and wrapped both arms around Harry with a strength she shouldn't have had in her present condition. Harry slipped a hand behind her head and gently held it off her pillow. Unbeknownst to them, all of their exposed skin began glowing softly as well.

Madam Pomfrey rushed over, shouting, "Mr. Potter! Miss Granger!" Luna sat up and staggered out of bed to see better.

"What's going on? What's happening?" Ron called from his bed, but even he could soon see it. His two best friends were locked in a kiss, lost to the world, and glowing white. Suddenly, the light flared in a blinding flash, then went out entirely.

Harry and Hermione pulled apart with a loud gasp, and Hermione sat bolt upright in the bed.

"Harry…" she said in bewilderment.

"Hermione…"

"What the—" their friends started.

"Hold it right there," Madam Pomfrey cut in, frantically waving her wand over the pair. "I don't know what that was, but it was definitely not normal." She pushed Hermione back down onto the bed, though Hermione still held both of Harry's hands in hers. "Miss Granger, you shouldn't even be conscious in your current condition, let alone sitting up. You—" Madam Pomfrey stopped and recast the spell. "What the…but how, that's…"

"What is it? What's wrong with her," Harry said worriedly.

"Surprisingly little, Mr. Potter, which is what's so puzzling. Miss Granger, I have no idea how, but you have just undergone well over a week's worth of healing."

"What?" all the students said at once.

"How do you feel Miss Granger?"

"A lot better," she said, still confused. "It still hurts, but not too bad. And…still tired, a little dizzy."

"Mm-hmm. You'll still need to stay here a while longer. Though if this holds up, I can take you off a couple of the potions." Pomfrey then waved her wand over Harry, against his protests. She stepped back and put her hands on her hips. " _You_ , Mr. Potter, for once, are the picture of health. If there were any residual effects from your battle, they're gone now. You don't have so much as a scratch on you."

"But what happened to them?" Ginny said. "What was that light?"

Pomfrey sighed. "I wish I knew. I'll have to ask Professor Dumbledore to take a look. I suppose it _could_ have been accidental magic, even at their age…" She turned back to the pair. "You both have some residual magical energy around you that I've never seen before. Mr. Potter, please get in the next bed. I'm afraid I'll have to keep you for observation for a while."

Harry glared at her. He still hadn't let go of Hermione's hands throughout the entire conversation.

"I mean it, Mr. Potter. At least until Professor Dumbledore can take a look at you."

 _Harry_ …he heard Hermione whisper. He looked back at her, and she nodded. He grumbled, but he rose from his seat and stepped away. Giving her hand a last lingering squeeze, he let go.

"Ahhgh!" Harry collapsed to the floor in pain, flailing his arms. He heard Hermione screaming in her bed.

"Harry!"

"Hermione!"

Ginny and Neville ran to help Harry up, while Luna took Hermione's hand. They tried to put him in the adjacent bed, but he fought back and reached out the other way until he connected with Hermione's hand again.

They both gasped with relief.

 _Hermione! What happened?_ he said breathlessly.

 _I_ _…I don't know,_ she answered. _As soon as you let go of my hand, I_ _…I felt like…pins and needles all over—and like I'd been hit by a truck._

 _Yeah, that_ _'s what happened to me—_ Harry swung the chair around with his free hand so he could sit by Hermione's head, leaning against the edge of the headboard.

 _Harry!_ Hermione exclaimed, staring at him in shock.

 _What?_

 _Your lips aren_ _'t moving!_

Harry's eyes went wide, and he realised the obvious: _Neither are yours!_

Hermione scooted up into a sitting position against the headboard to get closer to him. _Have you ever_ _—?_

 _No, have you_ _—?_

 _Never even read about it_ _…Madam Pom—_ "Uh…I mean…Madam Pomfrey…?" she finally got her voice to work again. "I think we have a problem."


	4. The Brothers Gaunt: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Parts of this chapter are quoted from _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_.

A/N: *Sigh* I was really trying to get out a new chapter last week, but this will have to do. I'm working on _How to Fight a Dragon Army_ , but it was a rough week to start with, and it's harder than I expected. That one is _not_ going to be one of my priorities going forward, and I might even set it aside for a couple weeks, but I still want to finish the next chapter before I move on. In the meantime, here's another one of my discarded stories. I have _four_ chapters of this one, so expect more to come.

* * *

 **Introduction**

 _The Brothers Gaunt_ was actually inspired by _Souls Abound_ by robst. The trouble with robst is that he has great ideas, but poor execution, and this one is a perfect example. The idea is that all of the other horcruxes wake up after the Chamber of Secrets incident and start possessing people, but where this should have made things so much harder for Harry and much more interesting, they all turn out to be pushovers. I wanted to really do the idea justice with the threat of five copies of Voldemort running around. In fact, I liked the idea so much that I wrote out four chapters of it, and I very nearly made _this_ my second full-length story instead of _The Arithmancer._ In contrast to _Souls Abound_ , it would have been a very Weasley-centric story, sort of in the tone of _Nightmares of Futures Past_ , though with a very different plot.

The reason I dropped this story in the end was something that I've come across in many alternative Third Year plots, which is, "And then what?" I never really know what to do with third year if the canon plot gets derailed, and it's one of the most common plots to derail. Even though I had a lot of pieces set up on the board, I didn't know what to do next. Yes, I probably could have come up with something if I wanted to, but by that point, I really didn't feel like doing another Hogwarts-years story. At this point, _all_ of my remaining stories besides _Animagus at War_ are non-Hogwarts-years stories, so I don't have much motivation to pick it up again.

* * *

 **The Brothers Gaunt: Chapter 1**

" _So ends the famous Harry Potter," said Riddle's distant voice. "Alone in the Chamber of Secrets, forsaken by his friends, defeated at last by the Dark Lord he so unwisely challenged. You'll be back with your dear mudblood mother soon, Harry…She bought you twelve years of borrowed time…but Lord Voldemort got you in the end, as you knew he must…"_

 _If this is dying, thought Harry, it_ _'s not so bad._

 _Even the pain was leaving him_ _…_

 _But was this dying? Instead of going black, the Chamber seemed to be coming back into focus. Harry gave his head a little shake and there was Fawkes, still resting his head on Harry_ _'s arm. A pearly patch of tears was shining all around the wound—except that there was no wound._

" _Get away, bird," said Riddle's voice suddenly. "Get away from him—I said, get away!"_

 _Harry raised his head. Riddle was pointing Harry_ _'s wand at Fawkes; there was a bang like a gun, and Fawkes took flight again in a whirl of gold and scarlet._

" _Phoenix tears…" said Riddle quietly, staring at Harry's arm. "Of course…healing powers…I forgot…"_

 _He looked into Harry_ _'s face. "But it makes no difference. In fact, I prefer it this way. Just you and me, Harry Potter… you and me…"_

 _He raised the wand._

 _Then, in a rush of wings, Fawkes had soared back overhead and something fell into Harry_ _'s lap—the diary._

 _For a split second, both Harry and Riddle, wand still raised, stared at it. Then, without thinking, without considering, as though he had meant to do it all along, Harry seized the basilisk fang on the floor next to him and plunged it straight into the heart of the book._

 _There was a long, dreadful, piercing scream. Ink spurted out of the diary in torrents, streaming over Harry_ _'s hands, flooding the floor. Riddle was writhing and twisting, screaming and flailing and then—_

 _He had gone. Harry_ _'s wand fell to the floor with a clatter and there was silence. Silence except for the steady drip drip of ink still oozing from the diary. The basilisk venom had burned a sizzling hole right through it._

 _Shaking all over, Harry pulled himself up. His head was spinning as though he_ _'d just travelled miles by Floo powder._ He picked up his wand and the diary in preparation to leave, but he was distracted by a growing headache.

While he collected himself, a parasite in his skull, a splinter of a corrupted soul, long suppressed, was waking up. So, too, were four others, scattered around Britain; and in distant Albania, a weakened, disembodied spirit threw all its effort into possessing a passing bat. It needed to make its way back to England once again, and quickly.

 _Then came a faint moan from the end of the Chamber. Ginny was stirring. As Harry hurried toward her, she sat up. Her bemused eyes travelled from the huge form of the dead basilisk, then over Harry, in his blood soaked robes,_ holding the destroyed diary in one hand and a fang in the other. _She drew a great, shuddering gasp and tears began to pour down her face._

"Ginny, it's all right," said Harry. "Riddle's finished. It's over. I—Ahhh!" He fell over backwards, screaming in pain as his scar felt like it was going to burst open.

"Harry!" Ginny screamed. "Harry, what's wrong?" She tried to help him up, but he thrashed away.

Her voice barely registered to Harry as the pain only seemed to grow worse. He felt an echo of a sinister presence was reaching out as if to control him, one that he had felt several times before, the last not five minutes ago. But how? Riddle was dead. In agony, he tried to rub his head with his fists.

Unfortunately, one of those fists still contained the business end of a deadly basilisk fang.

The tip of the fang scraped directly across Harry's scar. Instantly, his body convulsed, and his scar bled, though not with blood. A sickly black ichor poured out of it, far more than it should have been able to produce, staining half of his face black and oily. Then, there was a blinding flash of light, and he lay still.

"Harry? Harry!" Ginny scrambled over to him and took his hand, carefully removing the fang from his grasp. He began shaking from the poison again, but Fawkes fluttered back down beside him, letting out a squawk of what sounded suspiciously like protest, and cried a few more tears over Harry's scar. In another minute, the wound was healed, and he regained consciousness.

"Ginny?" he groaned.

"Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry," she said, forgetting what was left of her shyness and throwing her arms around his neck. "I thought you were dying. I'm so sorry, Harry, I tried to tell you—I swear I didn't mean to—Riddle, he made me do it." The words poured out in a torrent as she sobbed into his shoulder.

Harry awkwardly patted her on the back, for the moment still more embarrassed that he had managed to stab _himself_ with a basilisk fang and forced Fawkes to save him again. Whatever had happened with his scar, the tears seemed to have fixed it for the time being. "Thanks," he muttered, looking the bird in the eye. The phoenix gave him what from a human would have been a clear "Har-umph!" and waddled away. "Ginny, it's okay," he said. "It's all over now. C'mon, lets get out of here."

* * *

In Albania, a large brown bat flew along in a panicked state, trying to find nearest wizarding village. Two horcruxes, the spirit possessing it thought. _Two!_ How had someone managed to destroy two at once? He had protected them so well. Dumbledore himself would be hard pressed to find them all, and he knew the old man well enough to know that the ring would probably kill him outright.

Someone must be hunting them. Could it be Potter? The boy barely knew any magic and yet possessed a power against him that even the great Lord Voldemort still struggled to understand. Whoever it was, he could only hope they hadn't got a hold of any more. Left to their own devices, his remaining horcruxes would have sensed the destruction of two of their brothers and launched into equally desperate action. If they weren't in the hunter's clutches yet, they could take care of themselves, but that was not a chance he could take. And he still had a sixth to make to arithmantically balance his soul. He would have to take swift and brutal action when he returned to England.

The bat's body wouldn't last long. Small animals were such a hassle to work with, and worse, possession took a lot out of him. He needed something bigger, and even then, it could realistically take him months to get back in his weakened state. He would have to try to get the creature eaten by a hawk at first light so that he could jump ship. That should be enough to see him to a village.

* * *

Harry was quite the sight as he staggered into Professor McGonagall's office. He was covered in muck, grime, and blood, half his face stained black, and holding a jewel-encrusted sword in one hand. Ginny clung tight to his other arm, both of the weary, shell-shocked children supporting each other. The adults barely noticed when a clearly-annoyed Ron dragged an oblivious Lockhart in behind him, and Fawkes returned the Sorting Hat to Dumbledore's hands.

There was shock when Harry produced the twice-cursed diary from the folds of his robes, which turned to horrified gasps when he carefully unwrapped the basilisk fang from his torn-off sleeve and explained the whole thing, but when he mentioned the part about his scar, the colour drained from Dumbledore's face, and he sent everyone else out to the infirmary, leaving Harry to finish the story in private.

Dumbledore seemed to be mulling the matter over after he finished, but Harry pressed on with something that had been nagging him.

" _Professor Dumbledore… Riddle said I'm like him. Strange likenesses, he said…"_

" _Did he, now?" said Dumbledore, looking thoughtfully at Harry from under his thick silver eyebrows. "And what do you think, Harry?"_

" _I don't think I'm like him!" said Harry, more loudly than he'd intended. "I mean, I'm—I'm in Gryffindor, I'm…" But he fell silent, a lurking doubt resurfacing in his mind._

" _Professor," he started again after a moment. "The Sorting Hat told me I'd—I'd have done well in Slytherin. Everyone thought I was Slytherin's heir for a while… because I can speak Parseltongue…"_

"I would like to test that, Harry. I think I know what happened down there." The old man waved his wand in a pattern that Harry recognised from his duel with Draco. He tensed up as a small snake materialised on McGonagall's desk, but it didn't attack. "Can you speak to the snake now?"

Harry stared at the snake, but something seemed different this time, almost as if something were missing. "He—Hello?" he said. The snake merely hissed back at him. "Hello? Can you understand me?"

"I don't believe it can, Harry," Dumbledore said. "You are still speaking English." He vanished the snake. "It would appear that your Parseltongue ability has gone."

"What? Gone? How?" Not that he wasn't glad to be rid of it, but how could he just forget how to speak a language?

Dumbledore grew solemn. "Harry, what I am about to say to you, I must urge you not to repeat to anyone, not even to your friends, without consulting me first. This knowledge is far too dangerous to become widely known. Do you understand me?"

"Ye—yes, sir," Harry said, feeling like something very bad was about to happen. Dumbledore was waving his wand over him now, much like Madame Pomfrey did when he was her patient. Then, he conjured a rag for Harry to clean his face.

"Voldemort delved into the darkest and most evil of all magics, roads that few dark wizards—not even Gellert Grindelwald—dared to tread. You see, Voldemort's greatest fear is death, and to escape death, he performed vile acts and rituals—committing murders, visiting death on others, and thus splitting his very soul into pieces. I have only begun to understand the depths of what he did, it appears that he placed these pieces into various objects known as horcruxes for safekeeping. While these horcruxes exist, he cannot die. How many he made I do not know. In fact, I only suspected all of this until today, but I can see now that tonight, you have destroyed two of them."

Harry stood transfixed by the old wizard's words, but the wheels were already turning. "Two? But I—"

"One of them was this diary," he explained. "Yes, the spirit that possessed young Miss Weasley was not Voldemort's memory, but in a very real way, Voldemort himself—a piece of his soul. The second, though, was a horcrux that he never intended to create. For when he tried to kill you all those years ago, and his curse backfired, a piece of Voldemort's soul broke off and latched onto the only living thing in that house—you."

"Me?" Harry whispered, feeling as if he were about to faint.

"Yes, I am sorry to say. It was that fragment, rather than the curse itself that gave you your scar. And because a piece of Voldemort resided within you, you received some of his powers—your Parseltongue ability was not your own, but came from him. But by your accidental application of the basilisk fang, it would seem that you have destroyed the horcrux that was bound to your scar, and with it have removed Voldemort's abilities and influence. I suspect that you destroyed something so dark is why Fawkes thought you worthy of healing again, despite such a mistake. With it gone, I do not think that your scar will ever pain you again."

Harry's face lit up at the prospect. _No more headaches or weird premonitions_ _—ever?_ "Really, sir?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Indeed. In fact, I think you will find a number of things have changed." He conjured a mirror and held it up for Harry to see. His face was clean enough now that his scar was plainly visible, but he gasped to see that it no longer looked like a lightning bolt. With the added cut the basilisk fang had made, it now looked, appropriately enough, like a crooked, jagged letter "H."

"I must say I appreciate how you have made the look your own," he said with a chuckle. "You are very fortunate, my boy. I would not have expected the basilisk fang to work at removing the horcrux with you living to tell the tale. You may have averted far greater trouble for yourself later on."

"Sir…" Harry continued. "Does this mean that Voldemort will leave me alone, now?"

Dumbledore sighed. "No, I'm afraid not." He seemed to think for a moment, then said, "Harry, a year ago, you asked me why Voldemort wanted to kill you. At the time, I refused to tell you, both because I felt you were too young, and secretly because I feared that with the connection between the two of you, Voldemort might learn things he ought not from you…Well, I still feel that you are too young, but the connection is severed now, and given recent events, I fear that I may not have much choice in the matter. If you wish it, I will—"

"Yes! Please, Professor," Harry interrupted.

"Very well. The truth is that Voldemort tried to kill you because before you were born, a prophecy was made about you—a prophecy that predicted that you, and only you, would have the power to defeat him."

"Me? But how—how can I…? What did it say?"

"I could tell you," the old wizard said with a twinkle. "But it might be better if I showed you."

And so, Dumbledore led Harry up to his office, showed him his Pensieve, and played for him his memory of the prophecy made by Professor Trelawny. They discussed it a little, but Harry felt that he just needed some time to think it over. When pressed, Dumbledore gave him permission to tell Ron and Hermione about it, as long as he did not reveal the exact words. Soon after, he went down to the infirmary to be with his friends.

* * *

In an abandoned shack outside Little Hangleton, a cursed ring was radiating powerful compulsion charms. Within a few hours, a passing muggle was ensnared, entered the cabin, and, not being magical, bypassed the traps. Without knowing why, he tore up a floorboard and found a beautiful antique ring. Overwhelmed by its aura of curiosity, he put it on.

No one heard his screams of pain and terror as the blackened, withered flesh travelled up his arm. He ran from the shack, but staggered, then stumbled, as his body weakened. It was hours before anyone found him, twisted and mummified by the side of the road. It was another muggle who found the unfortunate man and the ring, and against all sanity, he placed it on his own finger.

Three days later, Auror Eric Williamson was dispatched to Little Hangleton to investigate a mysterious string of muggle deaths. Whoever had done this had made no effort to cover their tracks. He easily found the ring in a matter of hours. Obviously, it was riddled with dark magic and was still radiating compulsion charms. Strong ones. So strong in fact, that even knowing what they were, Williamson couldn't help but reach out for it and—

 _Stay back!_

The ring had other ideas. A wizard had finally found it, and it wasn't about to let him go like the others. The wizard had a strong mind, but the ring brought all of its formidable legilimency and a very useful secret to bear to bend him to its will. It reached out and found Williamson's greatest sorrow.

 _How many did you lose in the war?_

"What?"

 _Friends? Family? A wife?_

"What? How…?" Williamson's voice trembled. His partner in the Aurors and his wife had indeed both been killed in the war by Antonin Dolohov, but what was this cursed ring doing bringing it up?

 _Look carefully. See the symbol._

He looked, and his eyes widened. It was the same symbol as in Grindelwald's files, but also the same symbol he remembered from his old copy of _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_.

 _Yes, the Resurrection Stone,_ the ring said, _and I can teach you how to use it_. Voldemort had always known what the ring was, though even Dumbledore, if he had found it, would probably never have guessed that he knew. It was just his luck: three Deathly Hallows of incomparable power, and he wound up with the one he had absolutely no use for. Honestly, who was he going to talk to? His muggle-loving mother? His incompetent grandfather? Sticking a piece of his own soul into it was the only thing it was ever good for…until now. Now, the Hallow was paying dividends.

The soul fragment within the ring did then something it had never expected to do. It told Williamson how to disarm the Withering Curse. Then, under its instruction, Williamson put the ring on his hand and rotated the large jewel around his finger three times.

He had him!

* * *

"Griphook, we've got an alert on the dark magic detectors around the Lestrange Vault," Ragnok said. "The levels are dangerously high. They're interfering with the wards. Go check it out."

"Yes, sir." Griphook silently grumbled to himself as he took the cart down past the dragon to the Lestrange Vault. Of course, there was dark magic around there. The only humans with access to that vault were in Azkaban. Still, he couldn't argue with the Director. When he reached the vault, he was startled to feel a wave of dark magic wash over him even before he opened the door. It really was interfering with the wards. He redirected his anger from the Director to whichever one of the idiot Lestranges had put such a powerful dark object in there. Storing anything that interfered with the wards was a breach of contract. He stroked the crack in the door with one long finger and took his dark magic detector inside.

Sensing only goblins around, the soul fragment inside a certain golden cup surmised that it was stored in Gringotts somewhere, with no guarantee that it was even in an active vault, so it did the only thing it could: flare up enough dark magic to get itself confiscated. Griphook's detector immediately fingered the valuable-looking chalice on a high shelf as the culprit. Wearing dragon-hide gloves, he took it down and transported it to the disposal area.

The cup was to be dealt with the same way as all other confiscated items: destroyed by a goblin sword and melted down. However, since the goblin silver they used hadn't been reinforced with something a little stronger, like basilisk venom, the sword shockingly just bounced off it. When an axe and a hammer bounced off, too, Griphook started to get nervous. He apologetically approached Ragnok again, and, after inspecting the offending item himself, the angry Director decided to just hand it over to the Improper Use of Magic Office at the Ministry. Let _them_ deal with it.

That was how the cup wound up in the hands of Mafalda Hopkirk. Now, Mafalda had been a Hufflepuff, and she recognised the cursed object at once from the Founder's portrait. It was the cup of Helga Hufflepuff. This thing had gone missing in 1947! What was it doing locked in the Lestrange Vault in Gringotts with dark magic all over it?

The smart thing to do would be to hand the cup over to the Aurors to figure out what to do with it, but Mafalda failed to notice the compulsion charms that were planting a fairly un-Hufflepuff thought in her head: _Wouldn_ _'t this look good on my desk?_

There it sat for about a week, until the office had a particularly busy and aggravating day. "I swear," she shouted to no one in particular, "if I have to mop up after one more regurgitating toilet, I'm going to hex someone."

It was then that the cup made its move. In a passable imitation of what Mafalda expected Helga Hufflepuff to sound like, it began to whisper to her: _So sorry to hear that, my dear_ _…do you want to talk about it?_

He had her!

* * *

The lone resident of 12 Grimmauld Place ran around the house ranting like an even madder elf than he was.

 _You fool, you cannot destroy me. You cannot get rid of me. You do not have that power_.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"

The locket that Regulus Black left behind had been tormenting Kreacher for two weeks now, mocking him for failing to fulfil his master's final wishes.

 _You have failed, elf. You have failed your master_.

"No! Kreacher is good elf! Kreacher tries!"

The elf was stubborn. It was taking a long time to wear him down, but today, he finally cracked.

 _But you fail. Your are a bad elf_.

"KREACHER IS GOOD ELF!" he screamed. "Kreacher will destroy bad locket. Kreacher will get help."

The elf popped over to the only place he knew where someone might know how to destroy such a powerful dark object: Knockturn Alley.

Finally.

Kreacher wandered around a bit until he met someone who took quite an interest in the locket he was carrying. Mundungus Fletcher may not have been that bright, but he knew his ancient artifacts backwards and forwards. With the large "S" and the snake motif on that locket, it might well have belonged to Salazar Slytherin himself. So he casually strode up and asked the obviously-insane elf what he was doing with it.

"Destroy! Kreacher must destroy it! Master said so!"

"Hey, hey," Dung said. This probably wouldn't work, but it was worth a try. "I've seen these things before. I can destroy it for you."

"YES! You take it! You take bad locket. You destroy it for Kreacher." The elf thrust the locket into Dung's hands and popped away before he could get another word in.

Dung was surprised. The elf had to be pretty far gone if he could consider _that_ following his master's orders. Oh well, he did get the valuable-looking locket out of it.

 _The real treasure is_ inside _the locket,_ a strange voice whispered. _To get it, you must speak the password, which I will tell you as a reward for saving me from the mad elf. Now, listen carefully, and repeat after me_ _…Hesha-hassah._

He had him!

* * *

 _I need a place to hide my Fanged Frisbee. I need a place to hide my Fanged Frisbee. I need a place to hide my Fanged Frisbee._

It was the last day of the term, and Roger Davies found he had a few items that, while not technically banned (yet), his parents wouldn't let him keep at home. He needed someplace to stash them away where no one would find them over the summer, especially Filch. He wandered back and forth on the seventh floor, looking for hiding spots, when suddenly, a door appeared out of nowhere. Curious, he looked inside, and he gasped in amazement.

He stood in a vast storage room, filled with what looked like literally a thousand years' worth of junk. There were ancient suits of armour, piles of books from every century, congealed potions bottles, and Cornish pixies breeding in the rafters. Students must have been hiding things in here since the school was founded, he realised, and a lot of them. He wondered how many people in the school knew about this room right now. Still, he doubted anyone would come in here over the summer. He picked an identifiable spot near the door and set his Fanged Frisbee down, along with the rest of his contraband. He was about to leave when a voice whispered to him.

 _Over here._

It took him quite a bit of precious time to climb over the junk and locate the source of the voice, but it was worth it.

 _It can_ _'t be!_ He thought.

 _But I am,_ the voice whispered back.

Of course it was. He'd seen the statue in Ravenclaw Tower every day for the past four years. There was no mistake. It was the diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, lost for a thousand years, and he'd just found it!

Roger eagerly snatched the diadem up and hid it in his robes. He wanted to hand it in to Flitwick right away—there was sure to be a reward of some kind—but he was going to be hard-pressed to make the Express as it was. He would have to wait for autumn to unveil it.

A few hours later on the train, he got to thinking. The Lost Diadem was reported to make you smarter—or wiser, depending who you asked. But what did that mean? And was there any useful Lost Lore of Ravenclaw that came with it? The more he thought, the more he felt the diadem calling to him. When he could stand it no longer, Roger dashed into a bathroom, pulled out the diadem, and placed it on his head.

He had him!


	5. The Brothers Gaunt: Chapter 2

Disclaimer: All hail JK Rowling.

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

 _Dear Weasleys_ , Harry wrote.

He was nervous writing this letter, quietly taking out his quill and parchment from the loose floorboard under his bed after midnight so that his alleged family wouldn't hear him. If he got caught, well, he wouldn't even be able to finish his summer holiday homework, let alone write any letters. He considered dropping the whole thing, but he needed to talk to _someone_ about what had happened down in the Chamber. More importantly, he was sure Ginny needed to talk about it, too. He knew the look he had seen on her face in those weeks at the end of the term—the same fake smile he had worn himself so many times. He had tried to talk to her at school, but he could never seem to catch her—the one person he couldn't, in fact, since everyone else seemed to want to see his new H-shaped scar. He knew her family would be supportive, but after all, he was the only other person she knew who had faced Voldemort. So three weeks into the summer, he was hiding under his blankets writing letters to his friends.

 _Dear Weasleys,_

 _Good news! My Uncle is letting me let Hedwig out at night_ _"so it won't make such a God-awful racket!" I'm still not allowed to send letters to my friends, but I found a good hiding spot, so if you make sure to only send letters late at night, I won't get caught._

 _My summer_ _'s going about the same as usual—that is, not much fun, but at least I don't have bars on my windows again, and there's been no mad house elves showing up so far. It's kind of hard to get my homework done since I'm not supposed to use my quill, but it seems to be working out. I'm just hoping things stay quiet the rest of the summer._

 _Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, I_ _'m sorry I didn't get a chance to talk to you properly back at the end of May. Don't be too hard on Ginny. She did a better job in all this than she probably let on._

 _Percy, try not to work too hard. Ron, Hermione_ _'ll kill me if I don't tell you not to skive off all summer. Fred, George, I'd say stay out of trouble, but I know who I'm talking to. Ginny, try to get that Potions Essay out of the way early—trust me. Have a great summer._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Harry Potter_

Harry wrote two more notes and stuffed them in the same envelope before handing it to Hedwig to deliver.

 _Dear Ron,_

 _Don_ _'t feel bad about that phone call. Yes, Uncle Vernon was pretty mad at me, but that's normal for him. I probably won't be reachable by phone until I'm 18, so just write to me when you get a chance. And if you call anybody else, remember you don't have to shout into the phone._

 _You don_ _'t need to worry about me. Really. I've got things under control here. If I do wind up needing help again, though, you should probably ask Hermione. Don't get me wrong, you're family's great, and I really enjoyed staying with you last year, but you're out a flying car, now, and my aunt and uncle will have a lot more respect for a pair of muggle dentists. Sad, but true._

 _Don_ _'t let Hermione push you around too much, mate. See you in September._

 _Harry_

Finally, he got to the letter he really wanted to write:

 _Dear Ginny,_

 _I really wanted to talk to you at the end of term. I_ _'ll understand if you don't want to talk about what happened, but I think you should try. It's not good to keep something like this bottled up. Believe me, I had to for most of this past year. When the Heir of Slytherin rumours got really bad—anyway, I know you're the one who got the short end of it, but still, if you ever want to talk, I'm here for you. I know what it's like to not have anyone else who understands you. Not that your family doesn't understand. Merlin knows they're miles better than mine. But even with the people who are closest to you—like Ron and Hermione for me, it's just not the same when they haven't been through what you have._

 _I want you to know you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of about what happened. None of it was your fault. It was Tom doing all of it. Writing in that diary was an honest mistake, and I made the same mistake, too. You know Tom was clever enough to fool everyone in the wizarding world but Dumbledore for years. In fact, I have you to thank for stealing it back from me_ _—no matter what your reason was. Tom told me down in the Chamber that he had every intention of using it to kill me._

 _I guess what I_ _'m trying to say is that you're one of the strongest people I know, and you should remember that. I've faced You-Know-Who three times and nearly died every time. But you fought him for most of a year and even fought his influence off completely once when you threw the diary away. Not even Dumbledore's done something like that. If you can do that already, I know you're going to be a great witch. And it was really only bad luck Tom got Hermione when he did, or we probably could've sorted everything without you getting hurt._

 _There_ _'s one more thing. Dumbledore told me something when he sent everyone else out of McGonagall's office. I can't tell you what it was, exactly, but I think that what happened to me in the Chamber might actually save my life later on. So after everything, at least some good came out of it._

 _I hope everything_ _'s going well for you at the Burrow. If any of your brothers (or anybody else) gives you trouble, just remind them that you've got a friend who killed a freaking 50-foot snake with a sword. Preferably with those exact words. But seriously, please try to enjoy your summer, and don't turn away from your family. You don't know how good you have it. I'd trade all of mine for any one of yours. Even Percy. But don't worry about me. It's only two months, and going to Hogwarts the rest of the year is worth it. See you in September._

 _Your friend,_

 _Harry_

* * *

Ginny was glad she had gone into her room before reading Harry's letter because she was crying like a baby by the end of it. She couldn't believe Harry Potter would call her his friend at all, let alone after everything that had happened. The Diary horror aside, they'd barely talked to each other all year, and she had been deliberately avoiding him at the end of term—and she was sure he knew it. And he was thanking her for saving _his_ life? What on Earth was that about?

The truth was, he was right. She didn't want to talk about it. But she also couldn't seem to escape it. She had nightmares about it almost every night. Sometimes she was trapped in her own body as Tom forced her down into the Chamber. Sometimes she was just killed by the basilisk. Sometimes Harry was dying in front of her. She couldn't fathom how Harry had managed it his entire life. Harry said she was one of the strongest people he knew, but she didn't feel strong. She felt like she was about to fall to pieces every day.

Maybe Harry was right. Maybe she did need to talk to someone—to talk to _him_. It was amazing how much his letter changed her perspective. She understood what he was saying about family, too. It was easy to see when compared with his so-called relatives. Even Percy. Percy had panicked her (not to mention annoyed her) more than anyone else last year, but she knew he was just trying to look out for her.

She got her quill out to write back to Harry, but she was interrupted by her father's excited arrival.

* * *

Harry couldn't believe his eyes when he saw his Ron's to his letters, in part because it was completely different from what he had written him about.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _You_ _'ll never guess what happened! Dad won the Daily Prophet Galleon Draw! It's 700 galleons! We've got enough to spend a month with Bill in Egypt and still have enough left over for new books and robes this fall. And Mum and Dad are gonna buy me a new wand. Sorry you couldn't come, mate. Bill would've loved to meet you, but it was really sudden, and it's seriously hard to get a hold of you. But we'll be back about a week before school starts. See if you can get away and meet us sometime then._

 _I_ _'ll try to send you a souvenir for your birthday._

 _Don_ _'t let the muggles get you down! Just try and stay out of trouble with them._

 _Ron_

With Ginny's letter, the first thing Harry noticed was that it was stained with teardrops. He opened it quickly and began to read with concern.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _Thank you so much for your letter! It really was just what I needed to hear. You were right_ _—about my family and about the Diary._

 _I think I_ _'ve been not talking to anyone because that's how Tom did it. I don't know what he told you, but that's what he did—got inside my head, pretended he was on my side—_

The next few lines were shakier and more smudge than the rest of the letter.

" _Don't worry, Ginny, stress can cause memory loss sometimes. Just take it easy. It's okay, Ginny, I'm sure the cat was just a coincidence. Your brother's being paranoid, Ginny. Try to avoid him until he calms down. It's got to be one of the Slytherins attacking people, Ginny. Maybe they've been hexing you. You should probably stay away from them."_

 _It_ _'s so hard to trust anyone again after what he did to me. My family's all been really good with me, and they're trying to understand, but it's like they don't know what to say to me, and it doesn't help I don't really know what to say to them either. I don't get how you do it. You had practically_ _everyone_ _suspecting you last year. I know I would_ _'ve started hexing people and just made it worse._

 _Do you get the nightmares too? My roommates were freaking out about me at the end of term, and I_ _'ve still barely been able to sleep all summer. I know you don't remember much from when you were a baby, but you faced Quirrell and then Tom—you must get them, right? How do you deal with them?_

 _I can_ _'t believe you thanked me for saving your life twice. And that you said I'm going to be a great witch. The way I was those last few weeks, it was lucky Dumbledore cancelled exams or I don't know if I could have passed them._

 _Ron will have told you about Dad winning the Galleon Draw. I couldn_ _'t believe it when I heard. Egypt's amazing! Mum won't let me in some of the tombs, though. She says it's too dangerous with all the curses Bill works with. I wish you could've come with us and met Bill. He really lectured me good last night about the Diary thing, but he's still really great. He told me to thank you for saving me. He says even he wouldn't want to go in someplace with a basilisk._

 _I wish you could just come and stay with us during holidays, Harry. I can_ _'t believe your relatives would treat you like they do. I don't think Mum and Dad really believed Ron when he said there were bars on your windows last year. It's too bad you can't hex them without getting in trouble. Does Dumbledore really make you keep going back there?_

 _I hope your summer doesn_ _'t go too bad. I'm sorry I won't be able to write much from over here. I can't wait to see you in September._

 _Sincerely,_

 _Ginny_

* * *

 _Dear Ginny,_

 _That_ _'s great to hear about Egypt. You all deserve some down time. I'm glad to hear you're getting on so well with your family. Say hi to Bill and Charlie for me. And ask Charlie how Norberta's doing. He'll understand._

 _Ginny, Tom was the same way with me. He was all friendly, and he acted like he wanted to help me stop the attacks, and then he tricked me into thinking Hagrid was the Heir. I_ _'m sorry he did that to you. It's hard when you don't think you can trust anyone. Believe me, I lived that for a long time. You just have to know who your real friends are. I know I could never do that to you or any of my friends, and I don't think you could, either._

 _I do get the nightmares. Ron knows some of it. So do Neville, Dean, and Seamus. They_ _'ve all heard me yell in my sleep. They've all been really great about not making a big deal about it, but you can ask Ron about it if you want. Sometimes it's just a scream and a flash of green light, and sometimes it's Quirrell or Tom and the basilisk. I used to get headaches, too. I got them a lot when Quirrell was around, but Dumbledore said what happened in the Chamber stopped them._

 _I_ _'m sorry I can't really give you much advice about nightmares. I guess I've just kind of got used to them. My uncle didn't have any patience for them, so I didn't have much choice. I guess that's how I dealt with everyone hating me, too. My cousin always bullied anyone who was nice to me at school, so I was on my own most of the time. I still think I would have gone spare without Ron and Hermione around last year, though. I almost lost it when Hermione was petrified. I guess you don't know how good you have it until it's gone._

 _Have fun in Egypt. Maybe next year, I_ _'ll find a way to get away from the muggles._

 _Your friend,_

 _Harry_

 _P.S. Tell Bill I wouldn_ _'t want to go in someplace with a basilisk either._

* * *

 _Dear Harry,_

 _Happy birthday! My gift is in the box with Ron_ _'s. It's a scarab that's supposed to glow to warn you when something dangerous is about to happen, but I'm not sure if it's working either because it glowed every time Ron used his Sneakoscope, and the only bad thing that happened was when Bill hexed Fred and George for putting beetles in his soup._

 _Charlie says Norberta_ _'s doing well, and she's getting to be pretty good at flying._

 _Percy_ _'s been a bit of a git about being Head Boy, but Fred and George are keeping him in line._

 _Ron told me about your nightmares. He said some of them sounded pretty bad, but you didn_ _'t want anyone to know about them. I don't want to pry or tell you you need to listen to your own advice, but it sounds like you're hiding some things. What did you mean when you said you couldn't trust anyone for a long time? And about your uncle and cousin—was it really that bad? If you don't want to talk about it, that's okay, too. I promise I'm not letting anyone else read your letters, though._

 _I worked up the courage to ask Mum what see does about nightmares because I know she still gets them from the war sometimes, but she said it mostly involves Dad holding her. Well, that and a glass of warm milk before bed. That helped a little. But I_ _'m really glad I can trust you, Harry. I think it's your letters that have helped more than anything else._

 _I hope you do get away from the muggles next year. If you want help, I think Mum and Dad would take your side, even against Dumbledore._

 _Your friend,_

 _Ginny_

* * *

 _Dear Ginny,_

 _Thank you so much for the scarab. I never got any decent birthday presents before except Hedwig. I think it might actually work. It glowed right before I found out my Aunt Marge was visiting this week. She_ _'s worse than Uncle Vernon. She once let her dog chase me up a tree all day after I stepped on its paw on accident. She somehow manages to insult me more than he does, too._

 _Did Errol make it back alright? I think you should make him an indoor owl from now on. He looked like he was lucky to be alive when he got here. He was unconscious and Hedwig and the Hogwarts owl were carrying_ _him_ _. Hedwig_ _'s going to have to stay with you for the week. I don't want to risk having her in the house at the same time as Aunt Marge and her dogs. Something "abnormal" would be sure to happen._

 _So how did you turn around and start using my own words against me? You_ _'re right, I don't really like to talk about my life before Hogwarts. Mostly because I don't want anyone's pity. I've had to get by on my own for so long that it would just be too embarrassing if people made a big deal out of it—you know? Or worse, they'd think I was making it up to get attention, even though I'd really rather just put that part of my life behind me. I'm glad I have you to talk to, Ginny. I think you get it, too. After all, people make a big deal about_ _anything_ _involving You-Know-Who, but I know you want to try to move past it. Anyway, I guess there_ _'s a difference between talking it out and making a big deal about it._

 _You see, when I say my aunt and uncle hate magic, I mean they_ _really_ _hate magic. They hated my parents, they hate me, and they won_ _'t even let me use the word in the house. They even told me my parents were worthless drunks and died in a car crash. I didn't know anything about magic until Hagrid showed up on my 11th birthday._

 _I_ _'ve never told anyone this, but my first Hogwarts letter was addressed to "The Cupboard Under the Stairs." That was where I slept for my first ten years here. When the letter came, my aunt and uncle got scared someone was watching them and moved me into an actual bedroom. They used to let my cousin beat me up all the time, but he's so fat and slow, he couldn't do it properly. When they put bars on my windows, they also locked me in my room and fed me through a cat flap. And they still call me "boy" or "freak" more than they call me Harry._

 _The thing is, I_ _'d rather just forget about all of that. I'm more worried about convincing Uncle Vernon to sign my Hogsmeade form than about any of the things they've done to me before. The past two years at Hogwarts have been the best time of my life despite the fact that I've almost died there at least nine times. I have friends there, I can do magic, and I can actually fight back when Malfoy insults me. I don't need anyone bringing up the Dursleys in all of that. They're just not worth it._

 _Anyway, thanks for being such a good friend, Ginny. I love Ron and Hermione, sure, but you know if I told them, Ron would rush in trying to save me, and Hermione would lecture me about how awful it is and how I need to stand up for myself, when, really, I just need someone to listen_ _—so thanks for that._

 _Your friend,_

 _Harry_

* * *

Ginny's next letter was unusually hard to read. It was more tear-stained than the others and very hastily (and Harry suspected angrily) scribbled. Harry laid in his bed at the leaky cauldron pondering her words as he read through it several times:

 _Dear Harry,_

 _Hedwig_ _'s started acting funny all of a sudden. Is something wrong? She wasn't suppose to leave until tomorrow. Did your aunt do something bad?_

 _I can_ _'t believe your own family would treat you like that! There's house elves who get treated better. That's gotta be illegal, even in the muggle world. How did you live with that your whole life without going completely mad or turning into a psycho dark wizard? To go through all of that, and you're still one of the nicest people I know—that's as impressive as surviving You-Know-Who three times. I can't even imagine._

 _To be honest, it_ _'s probably a good thing you don't talk about it much. If everybody found out what your relatives did, they'd probably wind up dead, and I know you wouldn't wish that even on them._

 _Look, Harry, I_ _'m not Hermione, but I do think you need to stand up for yourself. You should think about telling Dumbledore. Maybe he'd let you stay somewhere else if he knew how bad it was. My parents would take you in just knowing what they do now, if you asked them. I get how you want to put it behind you. That's what I've been trying to do. But you know you'll never really be able to do that until you move out._

 _Mum and Dad are starting to get worried because I_ _'ve been mad all week. I hope you're okay. We'll be back next week, so I hope I can see you then. Maybe you can come to our house for the last week of summer._

 _Did you hear about Sirius Black? No one knows how he got out of Azkaban. That_ _'s supposed to be impossible. Please be careful, Harry. I think Black was connected with you or your family somehow, but nobody wants to talk about it._

 _Errol_ _'s still alive, thank Merlin, but I don't know if he can keep delivering post much longer. We're trying to get Mum and Dad to make Percy let us use Hermes._

 _Your friend,_

 _Ginny_

* * *

 _Dear Ginny,_

 _Hedwig_ _'s a pretty smart owl. She must have known what was wrong._

 _I ran away from home. Aunt Marge insulted my parents one too many times (well, a few too many times), and I accidentally blew her up. I thought I was going to be arrested and expelled or something because I_ _'d already got a warning letter last year, but Minister Fudge tracked me down and said they'd punctured her and modified her memory and I wasn't in trouble. I think it was because of something to do with him being scared about Sirius Black, though. Apparently he's a really bad guy. He was You-Know-Who's second-in-command, I guess._

 _Anyway, I couldn_ _'t spend another minute in that house, so I'm staying the Leaky Cauldron this week. It's loads better than staying with the Dursleys, except I probably won't be able to go to Hogsmeade now. But I'd love to stay at the Burrow for the last week._

 _Actually, think I might ask your parents if they would take me in. I wasn_ _'t going to because I don't want to be a burden on anyone. (That's one of the things Uncle Vernon always complained about.) And I could easily pay my own way, but I know your Mum would never accept the money. I already tried that last year. But after last night, I just can't go back there again. I'd take the Burrow over that in a heartbeat—or even just somewhere, anywhere, but that place. I'll try to talk to Dumbledore this year, but he always seems to change the subject when I mention it. Although, can he actually_ _make_ _me go back, I wonder?_

 _You know, I think we_ _'re the only two people who can talk so casually about fighting You-Know-Who. Maybe Dumbledore, but he always seems pretty serious about it. But I think we kind of have to be able to laugh about it a little. I would have cracked by now if I had to be as serious as everybody else about him all the time. Have you seen how everybody flips out when I say Voldemort? Sorry, but I just can't be scared of a name. It's not even a very good name. I think he meant it as "Flight of Death," but I like to think of it as "Theft from Death" because it makes it sound like he got it backwards._

 _Go ahead and enjoy your last week in Egypt. I_ _'m doing just fine here, but I can't wait to see all of you next week. You stay safe, too._

 _Your friend,_

 _Harry_

* * *

Ginny didn't send another letter back with Hedwig, but Harry wasn't too worried, since she was coming back soon. Plus, Hedwig was perfectly content, and she always knew if something was wrong. He waited out the week, buying his school supplies and then just wandering around the Alley, window shopping.

Finally, on the Wednesday before start of term, he saw them: a gaggle of redheads coming toward him down the Alley. Ron waved to him most frantically of all of them, but as they drew near, Ginny broke ranks and ran up and hugged him, much to his surprise. "Harry! It's so good to see you," she said.

"Whoa, Gin, what's got into you?" Ron said while the other Weasleys looked on in surprise. "Last year you couldn't say two words to Harry without turning beet red."

Ginny hastily pushed away from Harry, revealing that she had, in fact, turned beet red. "Well, uh, a lot's happened in the last year," she stammered. That shut Ron up right away. "I was starting to get worried, Harry. They say Sirius Black's killed two more people this week. Everyone's really scared."

"Well, no one's seen him around here," Harry assured her before walking up to Ron. "Hey mate, how was Egypt."

"Oh, it was great! You should have seen the cursed tombs Bill was working on. They were full of skeletons of muggles who'd got in and grown extra heads and stuff. I don't think Scabbers liked it much, though." He held up his rat, who was looking even more bedraggled than normal. "Did you really blow up your aunt, Harry?" he said with a snigger.

"I didn't mean to. I just—lost control. She did deserve it, though."

Ron roared with laughter.

"It's not funny, Ronald," Mrs. Weasley said sternly.

"Don't listen to her, Harry—" Fred said.

"—it was the best prank we've heard of all summer," George added.

"And you didn't even get in trouble."

"I thought I would, though," Harry said. "Forget expelled, I was sure I'd be arrested."

"Oh, Harry," Ginny exclaimed, "they never expel _anyone_ for accidental magic. That's why it's called accidental. Didn't you know that?"

"No! Nobody ever tells me anything. Not even Dumbledore unless he doesn't have a choice. All I knew was I'd got a warning letter last year for a hover charm that a mad house elf did instead of me."

"That's right," Mr. Weasley remembered. "You ought be able to get that warning removed since you freed the elf, and he can tell them. I'll have a talk with…" He became very subdued. "Whoever's in charge of the Improper Use of Magic Office now."

Harry nodded. He had been reading the _Prophet_ for any news of Sirius Black, and he'd been listening to the gossip in the pub, too. Two murders in the past week, or maybe three. Mundungus Fletcher was a crook, they said, but it came out afterward he was an associate of Dumbledore's somehow. It was obvious why Black went after him. On the other hand, no one was sure why he'd gone after Mafalda Hopkirk, though some of the more crass comments suggested that she had sent him one too many warning letters. Then there was Auror Williamson, whom the Ministry had ruled a suicide, claiming he had been increasingly depressed that summer, but a lot of people didn't believe it.

Luckily, Mr. Weasley changed the subject. "Anyway, Harry, we'd love to have you over for the next week. No need to stay over the pub—though we'll be back there the night before term starts."

"Thanks a lot, Mr. Weasley," he said.

"No problem at all, Harry. You're as good as family already in my book."

"And Hermione's gonna try and visit too, if her parents will bring her," Ron said.

"Great. I can write to her and tell her about the Knight Bus. It'll be faster that way."

"Cool. We've just gotta finish shopping here, and then we can floo home."

* * *

They got to the Burrow late that night and talked about their summers until they were about to fall asleep. It was mostly the Weasleys' summer, of course, but Harry told them a little of his, doing his best to make it as humorous as possible. He and Ginny glanced at each other a few times, Ginny blushing whenever she looked at him in a way that looked perfectly normal to her family, but they had no opportunity to speak alone before they went to bed.

Two hours later, Harry descended the rickety stairs to the living room and was only a little surprised to see Ginny already sitting on the sofa by the light of a dim lamp.

"Hey…nightmares too?" he whispered.

Ginny turned red and froze up, but she managed to relax and nodded to him.

Harry sat on the sofa next to her uncomfortably. Neither of them moved to touch the other. "Was it Tom?" he asked.

She shook her head. "It was you…in the Chamber, with the fang…except Fawkes wasn't there to save you this time…I've been having that one more lately."

"Ah…well, I'm here now, safe and sound."

"I know…what about you?"

Harry sighed. "It was strange. I don't really remember it, but there was this giant black dog in it. I haven't had that one before."

"Harry! That was a grim! It's supposed to be a really bad omen."

"Ginny, my whole life is a bad omen." Harry remembered what the manager at Flourish and Blotts had told him. "You shouldn't go looking for omens. You'll start to see them everywhere."

"Harry, about the Dursleys…"

"It's fine, really."

"I'm sorry. It's just that…how could you stand it—sleeping in a cupboard for ten years?"

"I guess I just didn't know any better, you know? It's all I could ever remember, so I thought it was normal, somehow. I'd never put up with it now, though. I'd probably accidentally magic the door off. It's the same with Aunt Marge. She's been insulting my parents like that my whole life, but this was the first time I knew how wrong she was."

"They really need to get a clue," Ginny said fiercely. "The day you turn seventeen, you can do anything you want to them, and no one could stop you."

Harry started to chuckle softly. "Oh, they already know that. It's funny. My aunt and uncle think they're so much better than everyone else because they're so perfect and 'normal,' and meanwhile, I'm not worth a pile of dirt just because I'm different. And yet they're scared of me because they know I could mop the floor with them, and it's only the threat of being expelled that keeps me in line."

"Then why aren't they nicer to you? How can they be that stupid?"

"Because they actually buy their own crap. They're as bad as any of the pureblood bigots in our world. Seriously, if they were magical, Dudley would be one of Malfoy's goons like Crabbe and Goyle."

Ginny giggled. "Now _there_ _'s_ a horrifying thought."

"I know, he even looks like them—except fatter."

She tried to restrain herself from laughing too loudly and leaned back into the sofa. This was the first time she'd actually been able to relax around Harry Potter—or rather, she thought now, her friend Harry who just happened to have saved her life and faced You-Know-Who three times and lived.

"How have you been sleeping?" he asked her. "Usually, I mean."

"A little better," she said wearily. "I guess I just need time is all…I just wish everybody would quit walking on eggshells around me so much. I'm not that bad, am I? I mean, the dreams are worse than anything my family's likely to say. Even Ron."

"No, I get it. That's one more reason why I don't talk about the Dursleys. It's already hard enough to get people to talk to me normally, being the Boy-Who-Lived—and now everyone's staring at me because my scar's changed. I don't need anybody looking at me like a victim on top of it."

"Oh, Merlin, everyone would start to think your life was one of those tragic plays like at the Diagonal Theatre."

Harry chuckled with her. "I hope not. I'd probably die in the last act facing Voldemort."

Ginny winced, and her breath hitched in her throat.

"Sorry," Harry said quickly. "Too much?"

"A little." She blinked back tears and hugged him. "I don't like to think about that." She slowly relaxed again and continued, "Still, it's nice you're not afraid to crack a joke around me. I can tell even Fred and George have been second-guessing themselves. I just wish things could go back to normal."

"Well…I wouldn't know anything about that. My life's never been normal. But I'm starting to think being normal's overrated. After all, look what it did to my relatives."

She laughed out loud at that. "Thanks, Harry. I'm glad I can come talk to you."

"Anytime, Ginny. It's nice to finally get this off my chest…You know," he said, switching gears, "I've been thinking I need to start training—extra, I mean. Dumbledore said Voldemort's probably going to come after me again." He was pleased to see she only tensed up a little at Voldemort's name this time, not to mention the news. He made a mental note to ask Dumbledore to let her in on the prophecy. "I want to be ready so I don't have to get by on luck next time."

"Harry—" She looked as if she were deciding whether to freak out or not. "H-how are you going to do it?"

"I don't know. I think I'll ask whoever's teaching Defence this year—if they're any good."

"And not possessed…If you find something, Harry, can I do it with you?"

"Ginny, I—"

"It's just that if V-Voldemort really comes back, there's gonna be another war—and I want to know I can actually fight back next time."

Harry smiled at her. "Sure, Ginny, of course you can." He yawned and got up to leave.

"Going back to bed?"

"Yeah." He started up to stairs.

"Hey, Harry?"

He turned back to her.

"You wanna go out flying?"

"Flying?"

"Uh huh."

"At night?"

"Sure, why not."

"But you don't have a broom, do you?"

Ginny grinned mischievously at him. "Nope," she whispered, "but I've been sneaking my brothers' brooms out since I was six."

Harry grinned back at her. "I'll go get my Nimbus."

That night was easily the best Harry had had all summer. Of course, his Nimbus Two Thousand could fly circles around Fred's Cleansweep Five, but they mostly took it slow, keeping close to the house for safety's sake. Ginny was shocked when Harry offered her a spin on his broom, but once he convinced her to try it, she zigzagged around the fields so well that Harry told her she should try out for Chaser when they got to school. They flew until they were too tired to go on, mostly just staying side by side without talking. When they returned to bed, they both slept until morning without nightmares.

* * *

"Oh, Merlin's saggy left—"

"ARTHUR!" Mrs. Weasley screamed.

"Dad, what's wrong?" Ron said with alarm.

With trembling hands, Mr. Weasley laid his newspaper down on the table, and a gasp went up around the room.

"Bloody hell!"

"Oh, bugger, no!"

"Merlin's saggy left…ear!" This last came from Molly Weasley herself.

Beneath the daily bulletin about the case of Sirius Black was another, more alarming headline: _HOGWARTS STUDENT DIES IN BROOM CRASH!_

"Broom crash? Who was it?" George said.

"Roger Davies!" Fred exclaimed.

"Roger? No! How?" Harry said in shock. "He's a great flier. He's the Ravenclaw Captain."

"It says…" Mr. Weasley was struggling to skim the story. "It says it looks like he just fell off."

"No way!" Fred yelled. "Roger's better than that!"

"Arthur," Mrs. Weasley said with growing horror. "You don't think—that Black…"

"No. I don't think so, Molly. It says he was found inside the wards of his house with no sign of a breach."

"But a wizard like Black can cover his tracks. How else could he have escaped?"

Mr. Weasley didn't have an answer to that. Harry and Ginny looked at each other worriedly. They both decided at that moment they'd had enough flying for the week.

* * *

That very morning, four shadowy figures wandered across the countryside of Britain. They were four young men, ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-one. All were tall and handsome with dark hair and dark eyes, but they hid their faces. They moved in distant parts of the country, often without magic. They couldn't afford to attract attention, given who they were and where they were going, and they had to be especially careful because they knew nothing about each other beyond their existence. They needed to recover their magical strength and, just as importantly, gather information. Their memories, after all, were about fifty years out of date.

Few now lived who would have recognised the four young men. And each could count on his fingers the number of people who would make the connection with a certain dark spirit who was, even now, struggling to make his way across Europe. But people would have recognised that each of them carried a priceless magical artifact of great power. And people would also have noticed, had they seen them together, that these four young men all looked very much alike.

It would take time, but Tom Riddle Jr could be four patient men when it was called for. And they had plans to make.


	6. The Brothers Gaunt: Chapter 3

Disclaimer: All roads lead to JK Rowling.

Parts of this chapter are quoted from _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ , and yes, there are a lot more quotes than I would use if I were writing it now. It was actually even worse before I did some light editing. I leaned far too much on direct quotes when I was starting out.

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

"I can't believe your parents wouldn't let you come to the Burrow," Ron told Hermione as they boarded the Hogwarts Express.

"Well, I guess I can't blame them," their bushy-haired friend said. "They figured out Sirius Black is a wizard name and got scared. It was hard enough to stop them from transferring me to Beauxbatons after everything that happened last year."

"What? You told them? Why would you do that?"

"Ron, how was I supposed to explain not being able to write them for three weeks? Especially after Dumbledore cancelled exams. You remember how mad I was about that? I was going to tell them I was busy revising. He blew my cover story."

"Wait, _that_ _'s_ why you said 'Oh, no' when exams were cancelled? I thought you were just being Hermione."

"Please, Ron, even I'm not that obsessive…I don't sound _that_ bad, do I?"

"Yes," Ron and Ginny said at once.

Hermione sighed in aggravation. "So how are you, Ginny?"

The little redhead took a deep breath. "Better…Getting better."

"I'm glad to hear that—"

"Arthur, quickly!" they heard Mrs. Weasley yell. The train began to move as Harry ran up to it. Ron threw open the door to let him on.

"What was all that about," Ron said as his parents dropped back behind them out of sight.

"You almost missed the train," Hermione scolded.

"I need to talk to you in private," Harry muttered.

"Ginny, leave," Ron said.

"Ginny too."

"What?"

"You heard him," she said. "Let's go."

The started looked for an empty compartment, and Ron looked at Ginny suspiciously. He opened his mouth to say something, but her glare stopped him. He didn't know exactly what was going on with his sister, but he wasn't so blind as to miss that she was writing back and forth to Harry all summer. He'd thought it was weird, but his dad said to let them be. He could always ask Harry later.

The didn't have much luck searching. The train was almost full, and the best option they found for privacy was the very last compartment, where a shabby-looking man was sleeping.

" _Who d'you reckon he is?" Ron hissed as they sat down and slid the door shut, taking the seats farthest away from the window._

" _Professor R.J. Lupin," whispered Hermione at once._

" _How d'you know that?"_

" _It's on his case," she replied, pointing at the luggage rack over the man's head, where there was a small, battered case held together with a large quantity of neatly knotted string. The name Professor R.J. Lupin was stamped across one corner in peeling letters._

" _Wonder what he teaches?" said Ron, frowning at Professor Lupin's pallid profile._

" _That's obvious," whispered Hermione. "There's only one vacancy, isn't there? Defense Against the Dark Arts."_

" _Well, I hope he's up to it," said Ron doubtfully. "He looks like one good hex would finish him off, doesn't he? Anyway…" he turned to Harry. "What were you going to tell us?"_

Harry took a deep breath. "Ron, Ginny, I overheard your parents arguing last night about whether to tell me—Before Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban, he kept saying 'He's at Hogwarts,' in his sleep. The Ministry thinks he's after me."

Ron gasped, and Hermione made a loud "Eep!" sound and clapped her hands over her mouth. Ginny said nothing, but her eyes widened, and she turned pale.

"That's why your Dad wanted to talk to me. He made me swear not to go looking for Black."

"I should think not!" Hermine squeaked. "If Sirius Black is after you…Oh, Harry! You'll have to be really, really careful. Black's already killed two more people. More if you…" Her voice caught. "If you believe the rumours."

"But why would you go after a crazy murderer who wants to kill you?" said Ginny.

"That's what I said to your dad," Harry said.

"He has a point, Harry," Hermione insisted. "You shouldn't go looking for trouble."

" _I don't go looking for trouble," said Harry, nettled. "Trouble usually finds me."_

"Yeah, but if that trouble is Black…" Ron shuddered.

"Well, it's not like it's any more dangerous than the past two years," Ginny defended Harry. "He's already had to fight Voldemort twice."

"Ginny!" Ron yelled. He and Hermione both looked very uncomfortable at that remark. They didn't want to think about Harry fighting Voldemort any more than they had to. Harry had told them about the prophecy at the end of last term, and that his part in it wasn't over yet, and it was a scarier prospect than they cared to entertain.

Professor Lupin stirred briefly at Ron's outburst, but he just shifted slightly and slept on. Ginny, however, misinterpreted his discomfort and responded, "Oh, grow up, Ron, it doesn't make any sense to be scared of a name. I—Harry…is that your Sneakoscope?"

The compartment fell silent except for a high, tinny whistle. Harry stood up and dug the device out of his trunk.

" _A Sneakoscope?" said Hermione interestedly, standing up for a better look._

" _Yeah… mind you, it's a very cheap one," Ron said. "It went haywire just as I was tying it to Errol's leg to send it to Harry."_

" _Were you doing anything untrustworthy at the time?" said Hermione shrewdly._

" _No! Well…I wasn't supposed to be using Errol. You know, he's not really up to long journeys…but how else was I supposed to get Harry's present to him?"_

Harry stuffed the Sneakoscope inside a pair of socks to deaden the sound so as not to wake Professor Lupin. There didn't _seem_ to be anything wrong, but he felt around and pulled out Ginny's present. It was glowing. "Maybe this scarab was interfering with it," he said. "It's supposed to glow when something dangerous is about to happen." When separated from the Sneakoscope, the yellowish glow subsided, so he guessed that why.

"Anyway," he continued. "I know what I _am_ going to do. I'm going to find some way to get extra Defence lessons. I'm tired of staying alive just by luck." He lowered his voice to a whisper and jerked his thumb in Professor Lupin's direction. "I'll ask him if he's any good. Otherwise, Dumbledore or Flitwick."

"I'm going to take them, too," Ginny said.

"What? No you're not," Ron said in reflex.

"You can't stop me."

"Uh-uh. Harry gets in enough trouble as it is. I'm not gonna let him drag you into it."

"Ronald Bilius Weasley, you can't tell me what to do," she said, crossing her arms. "And in case you've forgotten, Harry's the one who _saved_ me from trouble last year. I want to make sure I actually have a chance to fight back."

"Well…well, if I can't stop you, than I'm not letting you do it alone. I'm in, too."

Harry smiled. "Didn't think I could stop you either, mate."

"And so am I," Hermione said.

"You?" Ron turned to her. "You're already taking twelve classes."

"So? Bill and Percy both did the same thing for three years, even when they were prefects."

"Hermione, you saw how Percy was our first year. He was even more nutters than usual."

"Ronald Bilius Weasley, you can't tell me what to do," she copied Ginny.

Ron looked back and forth from his friend to his sister. He sank back in his seat and grumbled. They changed the subject after that and chatted about Hogsmeade for awhile, though they were dismayed that Harry couldn't go.

But as the evening wore on, and they drew close to the castle, the train made a sudden, unexpected stop. They heard bangs and thuds in the next compartment, and Hermione nearly went flying out of her seat.

"What was that?" she said. "Trains aren't supposed to be able to stop that fast."

Harry felt something warm in his pocket, and he reached in and pulled out his scarab. All four of them stared in alarm. It was glowing so brightly that it started to turn hot in his hand. They looked around, searching for any danger, but they couldn't see anything outside. Then, the lights flickered and went out. The scarab turned cold and dark with them as suddenly as the train had stopped, but Harry didn't think it was because the danger had passed. There were a few moments of confusion as everyone started tripping over each other, and then…

" _Quiet!" said a hoarse voice suddenly._

 _Professor Lupin appeared to have woken up at last. Harry could hear movements in his corner. None of them spoke._

 _There was a soft, crackling noise, and a shivering light filled the compartment. Professor Lupin appeared to be holding a handful of flames. They illuminated his tired, grey face, but his eyes looked alert and wary._

" _Stay where you are," he said in the same hoarse voice, and he got slowly to his feet with his handful of fire held out in front of him._

 _But the door slid slowly open before Lupin could reach it._

 _Standing in the doorway, illuminated by the shivering flames in Lupin_ _'s hand, was a cloaked figure that towered to the ceiling. Its face was completely hidden beneath its hood. There was a hand protruding from the cloak and it was glistening, grayish, slimy looking, and scabbed, like something dead that had decayed in water…_

 _But it was visible only for a split second. As though the creature beneath the cloak sensed their gazes, the hand was suddenly withdrawn into the folds of its black cloak._

 _And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it were trying to suck something more than air from its surroundings._

 _An intense cold swept over them all. Harry felt his own breath catch in his chest. The cold went deeper than his skin. It was inside his chest, it was inside his very heart_ _…_

Ginny felt as if something hard and icy had clamped down on her throat. Her breath burned in her lungs as if with a bitter cold such as she didn't think could happen in Britain. Darkness closed in around her like icy fingers on her skin.

 _Harry_ _'s eyes rolled up into his head. He couldn't see. He was drowning in cold. There was a rushing in his ears as though of water. He was being dragged downward, the roaring growing louder…_

Ginny eyes clouded over. Her limbs felt like lead. She was paralysed, going numb, and sinking into an abyss, even as she reached out to grasp something—anything she could to keep her anchored to reality. The sound of the world outside became muffled.

 _And then, from far away, he heard screaming, terrible, terrified, pleading screams. He wanted to help whoever it was, he tried to move his arms, but couldn_ _'t… a thick white fog was swirling around him, inside him—_

She heard pleading and crying. A trembling voice was begging someone to stop, begging to be let free. It was her own voice. A hard, evil voice was mocking her. She tried to escape, tried to fight it again, but the fog closed in, and the cold sank into her bones—

"Ginny!"

"Harry!"

"Ginny, please wake up!"

"Harry, are you alright?"

Ginny opened her eyes to discover that she was staring directly into Harry's. She was lying on a hard surface, which was rattling subtly. The Hogwarts Express was underway again as if nothing had happened. The two of them were lying on the floor and, she then noticed, clutching onto each other's hands for dear life. She tasted bile in her throat, and she felt like she been whacked in the chest with a bludger.

"Ginny? Are you okay?" Ron said, shaking her shoulder.

"Harry, please say something," Hermione pleaded.

Harry jerked his head toward the door. "Wha—what happened? What was that thing? Who screamed?"

"I did," Ginny said in embarrassment at the same time Ron said, "No one screamed." He looked at her in surprise and said, "Ginny, you didn't say anything."

A loud snap sounded behind them. Professor Lupin was breaking up an enormous slab of chocolate. He handed a large piece each to Harry and Ginny and said, "Here, eat. It'll help."

The two children extricated their fingers from each other's grip and took the chocolate, but they didn't eat it.

"What was that thing?" Harry asked, his voice trembling.

"A Dementor," Professor Lupin said. "One of the Dementors of Azkaban. Stay here. I have to talk to the driver." He quickly left the compartment.

"Are you two okay?" said Hermione, helping Ginny back into her seat. The little redhead was still shivering, so she put a comforting arm around her.

" _I don't get it… What happened?" said Harry, wiping more sweat off his face._

" _Well—that thing—the Dementor—stood there and looked around (I mean, I think it did, I couldn't see its face)—and you—you—"_

" _I thought you were having a fit or something," said Ron, who still looked scared. "You went sort of rigid and fell out of your seat and started twitching—_ and Ginny was shaking like mad, and she grabbed you by the hands and you sort of dragged each other down…"

" _And Professor Lupin stepped over you, and walked toward the Dementor, and pulled out his wand," said Hermione, "and he said, 'None of us is hiding Sirius Black under our cloaks. Go.' But the Dementor didn't move, so Lupin muttered something, and a silvery thing shot out of his wand at it, and it turned around and sort of glided away…"_

"But neither of you two passed out or fell off your seats," said Harry awkwardly.

"No, but… _I felt weird,_ _" said Ron, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably. "Like I'd never be cheerful again…"_

"I…" Ginny started, then sobbed for a moment. "I heard myself crying, and…and Tom laughing at me."

"What!" The other three cried.

"I—It was just like I remembered from…that day."

Harry started to make a connection. "I heard a woman screaming, but I thought—I thought I saw a green light."

"Dementors—" They all jumped as Professor Lupin stepped back into the compartment. "—feed on positive emotions. They suck everything that's good out of you and force you to relive your worst memories. Unfortunately, it would appear the two of you have worse memories than most…I haven't poisoned that chocolate, you know. It really does help."

Ginny and Harry each took a bite and were surprised to feel their icy limbs begin to warm up again. They looked at each other knowingly, relieved that at least understood why they had reacted so badly to the ghastly creature.

* * *

The foursome missed the Sorting, but they made it to the Great Hall just in time for Dumbledore to open the feast. At a look from Harry, Ron made sure to make room for Ginny beside them at the table. Dumbledore made his announcements at the start of the feast this year, when he informed everyone that the dementors were acting as guards to protect the school from Sirius Black.

Harry and Ginny exchanged a look. The dementors certainly didn't make them feel any safer.

Dementors, Dumbledore said were creatures without mercy, who could not be fooled by disguises or invisibility cloaks, and though he didn't come out at an say it, they sounded as dangerous to the students as they were to Black.

Harry was reminded of a line from one of those action movies Dudley liked: _"_ _It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...it doesn't feel pity of remorse or fear...and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead._ _"_

Meanwhile, Dumbledore did introduce Professor Lupin as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, and to Harry's surprise, Hagrid was the new Care of Magical Creatures teacher. That ought to be fun. Harry scanned the rest of the staff table and noticed that Professor Snape, the Potions Master, wore a particularly resentful look on his face at Lupin's announcement, but he stared intently straight ahead and didn't otherwise react. Actually, for Snape, that was unusually subdued.

"And finally," Dumbledore said, turning somber again, "Most of you will have heard by now of the tragic loss of one of our fellow students, Roger Davies, in a broomstick accident last week." There were scattered gasps from the few who had not heard. "Our condolences are with the Davies Family. He will be greatly missed. I would like to ask for a moment of silence in Mr. Davies's memory."

At three of the tables, everyone bowed their heads respectfully. Harry glanced up and eyed the Slytherin table on the far side of the Hall. Some of them bowed, but all were sitting in silence. A glance at the High Table revealed this was because Snape was glaring down at them warningly.

"Thank you," said Dumbledore. "Now, let the feast begin."

The settings filled with food and drink, and Ginny felt the tight knot in her stomach unclench for the first time since the train. Harry must have felt the same way, since he was eating as ravenously as Ron. She had never noticed it before, but she guessed Harry probably didn't get as much to eat as he should at the Dursleys. She hadn't paid it any mind before when her Mum kept complaining about how skinny he was, seeing as she was her Mum, but now, she had to wonder.

After dinner, she tagged along with her friends as they congratulated Hagrid for his promotion and then up to the dormitories before they finally split up for bed, but she was surprised when Hermione stopped her on the stairs. "So, Ginny, what's going on with you and Harry?" she asked.

"What?" Ginny sputtered, flushing bright red. "Nothing! We've been writing to each other is all."

Hermione seemed to suppress a smile. "Did you start this summer?"

"Yes. Harry wrote me because he thought I needed someone to talk to—about what happened. And…he was right, I did. It really made the summer a lot easier. And don't tell him I said this, but I think he needed it as much as I did."

Hermione raised an eyebrow slightly. "Well, I think it's sweet," she said. "It was very nice of him to help you out."

"Yeah—it really was."

"Well, good night, Ginny."

"Good night, Hermione."

Hermione felt a twinge of jealousy that Harry hadn't confided in her like he seemed to have with Ginny, but she quickly forced that down. After all, Harry _had_ told her and Ron the prophecy, and he had sent her a couple of letters of encouragement over the summer, telling her she should enjoy her holiday and shouldn't brood on it. And as scary as being petrified by a basilisk was, facing You-Know-Who—no, Voldemort—himself was much worse. That was something he and Ginny alone shared, save Dumbledore and a few others who were mostly dead now. If their reaction to the Dementor was any indication, she would count herself lucky if she never joined that number.

* * *

Severus Snape rolled up his left sleeve, revealing a hideous tattoo of a skull with the long, winding body of a snake emerging from its mouth. It was dark red and slightly fuzzy around the edges, but the head of the snake was much fuzzier than the rest.

"It has progressed further, Severus?" Albus Dumbledore said, rising from behind his desk.

"The final loop of the body became clear just in this past week. We are running out of time, Albus."

"My sources tell me that Voldemort has not yet returned to the shores of Britain," Albus insisted.

"Bugger what your sources say," Severus said. "Some _part_ of him is on the move and gaining strength—rapidly—and he is almost certainly being aided by Black. Have you made any progress with Slughorn?"

"Alas, no. He still refuses to tell me what he told Tom about horcruxes in his fifth year. We can be assured that Voldemort made multiple horcruxes. From what I know of him myself, I can speculate that he would have made six, for a seven-part soul." Both men shuddered at the horror of the prospect. "But that is not certain, and it tells us nothing about what or where they may be."

"We may be past the time to worry about that by now," said Severus.

"We must press on," Albus insisted. "Until the horcruxes are destroyed, Voldemort cannot be killed."

"But we do not have time to do that before he returns. We must prepare for war, Albus. A year ago, this mark was a vague discolouration, little more than a scar. It became _more_ clear after the events of this spring, not less. Now, at the rate he seems to be moving, I suspect the Dark Lord will make his move before Christmas Holidays."

"I assure you, I can see how dire the situation is. I have already begun contacting the Order to make preparations. We will be ready to return to a war footing at a moment's notice. I suggest you reach out to any contacts you have available to do the same."

"And the Auror Office? You can see how incompetently Fudge is handling the Black matter."

"Unfortunately, I have very little influence there. Until Voldemort chooses to show himself, the Minister will undoubtedly attempt to deny his return. I fear we are on our own for the time being. Please keep me informed of any further changes."

"Of course, Albus."

* * *

Draco Malfoy and his gang apparently had the entrance to the Great Hall staked out for the Gryffindors the next morning, since Malfoy just happened to pull a ridiculous swooning fit right when they walked in.

"Just ignore them," Hermione said taking both Harry and Ginny by the shoulder.

Pansy Parkinson called after them from her spot hanging on Malfoy's arm: "Hey, Potter, Weaslette, the Dementors are coming! The Dementors are coming!"

Harry considered telling them to go fight Voldemort and _then_ talk to him about Dementors, but Ron stepped in and muttered, "Easy, there, you two. They're not worth it."

Unfortunately, Malfoy couldn't leave well enough alone: "Better be careful, Potty. Don't wanna faint while your up on your broom. You might wind up—"

Four wands were drawn on Malfoy before he could blink. The Slytherins drew theirs, thinking they had them outnumbered, but a half dozen more Gryffindors, led by Fred and George, and every Ravenclaw within earshot rose from the tables behind them.

"Listen here, Malfoy," Harry spat. "I liked Roger. I don't know how it happened, but he was a good flier, and he always played fair, too, unlike some people I could mention. If you want to be able to get _on_ a broom this year, you won't finish that sentence."

"Is there a problem here?" They glanced toward the sound and were relieved to see the neutral (or as neutral as possible) Professor Sprout.

"Malfoy and his friends were just leaving, Professor," George said.

Under Sprout's glare, the Slytherins grudgingly lowered their wands and walked away.

"Blimey, Harry, where'd _that_ come from?" Ron said in amazement.

He shrugged his shoulders: "I just decided I'm done putting up with that kind of stuff anymore."

* * *

Moving under cover of darkness, a handsome young man carrying a golden chalice in his robes made his way to a large manor house in the north of England. He knew the place well, having used it as an occasional base of operations, of sorts. In his time, it had belonged to the wealthiest of his followers, though he now knew that at least one wealthier wizard, not part of his group back then, was now suspected of being his follower.

Only a couple of lights were on in the home. He did not know for certain, but from the Improper Magic citations, he believed that only an elderly couple and an elf or two were currently in residence, with a single son, born to them late in life, now attending Hogwarts. A once-great bloodline on its last legs. He sighed and pushed the thought from his mind. He would be able to solve that soon enough.

He was pleased to see that the wards didn't even twitch as he passed through them. After all these years, he was still keyed into them. Tom Riddle smirked to himself as he walked up to the door of Nott Manor.

* * *

Miles away, a handsome young man carrying a jewelled diadem in his robes approached the door of a large London townhouse. He had precious little information at his disposal from the boy who had so tragically died in a "freak broomstick accident," but he was still able to track down his old "friend" from his school days.

He needed more intelligence, and quickly. He knew only the basics of the war. He didn't even know if the old man's son was living there with him, but he would have to take his chances.

He knocked on the door of the Avery House. A minute or two later, an grey-haired man answered the door. A look of anger on his face instantly changed to fear when he recognised his visitor. He dropped to his knees and exclaimed, "Master!"

"Master, huh?" Tom Riddle grinned. "I could get used to that."

* * *

"Master, I swear, if there had been any sign from you, any whisper of your whereabouts—"

"You would have done nothing!" hissed the handsome young man who wore a unique and powerful ring on his hand. "You're a coward and a liar. I saw the files on your family at the Auror Office, Romulus Mulciber Senior. Imagine how surprised I was to learn that Romulus Mulciber _Junior_ was the sole "Death Eater" in your family. You pinned every last crime you committed on your own son and condemned him to be sent to Azkaban while you lived in comfort and forgot your true allegiance."

"Forgive me, Master," the old man begged, kneeling before a boy a fraction of his age in his own parlour.

"Forgiveness must be earned, Mulciber."

"I'll do anything you ask, Master. What do you need?"

"Information," Tom Riddle said. "Something that Auror I killed didn't know."

* * *

"Will you summon your followers, Master?" Gaius Rosier asked nervously as he bowed to the handsome young man who wore a silver locket around his neck—the boy he and the other men who encountered him this night had gone to school with long ago.

The man regarded the tattoo on Rosier's arm and admired the magical handiwork. "Not yet, Rosier," he said. "Obtaining a body this fast was difficult even for me. I need time to recover my strength. And I will need a full account of the war from you. Regretfully, my own memory ends in 1947. I was lucky that stupid lackey of Dumbledore's actually knew a few useful things about his "Order of the Phoenix," but I need more: things to which only the true followers of Lord Voldemort are privy. And we will need to plan our moves carefully. Your _true_ Master and mine is still out there and must be returned to life in order to establish our rule.

"I will tell you everything I can, Master."

"Oh, I know you will," said Tom Riddle as he forced his way into Rosier's mind.


	7. The Brothers Gaunt: Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or anybody else in this story.

A/N: The small stone bridge in this chapter is visible in the _Deathly Hallows_ films, which is also the "official" version of Hogwarts shown in the tour on Pottermore. It connects to the same tower (which I designate as Ravenclaw Tower) as the larger and better-known Stone Bridge.

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

That first week of school was a whirlwind for Ginny. To start with, she was quite alarmed by hearing Professor Trelawney saw the Grim in Harry's tea leaves, no matter how much Hermione tried to dismiss it. It didn't help that Hermione was acting so strange all of a sudden. Malfoy's adventure with the Hippogriff was amusing, until she found out how much trouble it had got Hagrid into, but the git's comment later about getting revenge on Sirius Black left the whole group more confused than anything else. Then, she was surprised—and yet not surprised—when Harry relayed the story of the boggart and claimed that he was more afraid of Dementors than Voldemort.

But after hearing him confide that, she became very concerned in her Friday Defence class when Professor Lupin led the second-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws down to the staffroom.

"The boggart lesson went so well with the third-years," Lupin said, "I thought I'd try it out on you second-years as a special treat."

 _A special treat?_ The class regarded him with looks ranging from scepticism to outright terror.

"Now you may think this is a little too advanced for this class, but remember that what really does a boggart in is laughter, and the younger set always has the greatest capacity for laughter."

Ginny didn't feel like laughing as Lupin taught them the _Riddikulus_ charm. She wasn't sure what the boggart would turn into in front of her, but a Dementor sounded like a good bet. Would Lupin really make her face it in front of the class?

"Very good, but the charm itself is only half of the solution. Joanne, would you come to the front, please?"

Ginny's quiet, blond, muggle-born roommate nervously walked to Professor Lupin's side. She had never really talked to Joanne much. The girl mostly kept to herself, writing stories in her little notebooks.

"Joanne, what would you say frightens you most in the world?" Professor Lupin asked.

Ginny could barely hear Joanne's answer when she said, "Being buried alive."

"Hmm…" he said thoughtfully. He whispered to her for a minute something Ginny couldn't quite make out before turning to the class. "If Joanne is successful, the boggart will shift its attention to each of us in turn. So I want each of you to think of what scares you most, and then think of how you can make it most funny. On the count of three, Joanne—one—two—three— _now_!"

With a spell from Lupin's wand, the wardrobe flew open, and mound of dirt poured out. In the blink of an eye, it formed into a freshly-dug grave in front of Joanne, yawning open to swallow her. She backed away, holding her wand up, trembling, but it moved toward her, its lip threatening to crumble away under her feet.

" _R-R-Riddikulus_ ," she squeaked.

 _Crack!_ Instantly, the grave exploded, overflowing with thousands of brightly coloured balls that bounced all over the room. Behind her, Ginny heard Colin Creevey laughing hysterically and saying something about a "ball pit," but all of the purebloods and most of the half-bloods were merely confused.

"Excellent, Joanne," Lupin exclaimed. "Patrick, forward!"

Ginny's classmates faced the boggart one by one, each succeeding in turning their fear funny. But there was nothing that could make a Dementor funny. Not when a Dementor instantly sucked all of the laughter out of the room. Didn't Professor Lupin remember what had happened on the train? She wanted to say something, but she couldn't. She knew she shouldn't be afraid to admit it in front of the class, but something stopped her, because as worried as she was, she still wasn't certain. Something about the thought of the Dementor felt _wrong_.

"Ginny, forward!" Lupin said.

She stepped forward slowly. It was now or never. "Professor," she said, "I think it's going to—"

But it was too late. The boggart was in front of her and transformed with a _Crack!_

It wasn't a Dementor.

It was Tom.

There was a scream behind her, and she saw why. At Tom's feet lay the limp body of Harry Potter, looking the way he had in the Chamber of Secrets, filthy, bleeding, and poisoned.

"No!" she said.

Then Tom spoke: "You've failed, ickle Gin-Gin. You escaped me, but he couldn't save himself. He died _because of you_."

"NO! _RIDDIKULUS_!" Ginny screamed, not even sure of what she was thinking.

The Boggart-Harry's eyes snapped open. In a flash, he grabbed Tom by the ankle with one hand and pulled his legs out from under him. Tom toppled forward and smashed his face bloodily on the floor.

"Oh, my," Lupin said uneasily. "I'm sorry you had to see that." Whether he was saying that to Ginny or to the rest of the class wasn't clear. He stepped in front of Ginny, probably to force it back into the wardrobe, but in his distracted state, he was too slow. The boggart changed to a silvery white orb, and when he used the spell himself, it became a balloon that zoomed around the room before stopping…in front of Luna Lovegood.

Luna's eyes grew wide with fear, and Ginny braced herself for whatever horrible monster her friend's wild imagination might come up with.

 _Crack!_ Suddenly, standing before Luna was Cornelius Fudge, except this Fudge was wearing a blood red suit and bowler hat instead of his usual lime green, and a goatee. And he was holding up a steaming-hot meat pie towards her.

"Pie, my dear?" the Boggart-Fudge said with an evil grin.

"N-n-no thank you… _Riddikulus_!" Luna squeaked.

The meat pie morphed into a banana cream pie and leapt from Fudge's hands, smacking him in the face. It was then that Colin Creevey got an idea and moved faster than anyone had seen him move before. Before the boggart could change again, he whipped out his camera and snapped a picture.

* * *

"Sugar quills."

Harry finally got a chance to go up to Professor Dumbledore's office on Saturday. As the moving staircase rotated into view, he saw that it looked much the same as it had last year, the walls filled with books and portraits of previous headmasters and headmistresses, much of the floor space taken up by tables full of curious silver instruments that emitted whirs and pings and puffs of smoke continuously. Fawkes sat next to Sorting Hat in one corner. Everything looked the same, in fact, except for Dumbledore himself. It had not gone unnoticed by the students and professors that the Headmaster had eschewed his brightly-coloured robes in favour of more subdued light blues and silvers, and the man himself looked a good deal more subdued than usual. Most people believed this was because of the Dementors, but Harry had to wonder if that was all it was, especially in connection with Snape being surprisingly tolerable this year—at least when Professor Lupin wasn't around.

"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said with a forced smile. "I trust your summer was not too unpleasant, despite a few hiccoughs. Please, sit down." Harry tread carefully around the many odd devices and took the chair across Dumbledore's desk. "I presume you are here to ask about the developments about Lord Voldemort and Sirius Black," the old wizard continued.

"Well, not exactly, sir…but if there's any news I should know about…"

"I'm afraid the news is most incomplete, but what I have been able to ascertain is not good," Dumbledore said. Harry tensed in his seat. "I have reason to believe that Sirius Black is attempting to help Voldemort obtain a new physical body and return to power."

"You mean—you mean with another horcrux, sir?" Harry asked.

"No, not a horcrux, or at least not a horcrux alone. For a horcrux has no memories or experience after the time it was created. No, I mean the true spirit of Lord Voldemort—the "main piece," if you will—the one who possessed professor Quirrell two years ago. This Voldemort is more dangerous than any horcrux. And should he return, you will be an great target than you are to Black."

Harry took a deep breath. Just his luck, he thought. He knew this was coming, more or less, but he certainly didn't expect it so soon. He nodded his understanding before changing the subject: "Professor, I tried to get my Uncle to sign my Hogsmeade form—"

"No, Harry," Dumbledore said sternly. "I'm afraid it is far too dangerous. It gives me no pleasure to tell you this, but even if you had a signed permission form, I would not permit you to go to Hogsmeade, not with both Black and the Dementors about. You saw how the Dementors went for you even under the full control of the Ministry. If Voldemort returns, they will turn at a moment's notice. I have told the Minister as much, but he refuses to listen. No, regretfully, while the Dementors remain on patrol and Black is at large, I cannot permit you to leave the Castle Grounds, and I must ask you to promise me you will not attempt to circumvent my wishes."

Harry's mouth turned very dry. There went any hope of going to Hogsmeade—maybe for the duration—and somehow, this didn't seem like the time to bring up wanting to leave the Dursleys either. Still, if Dumbledore said it was this bad—Dumbledore, who he was pretty sure had _let_ him go after Quirrellmort his first year—he decided he had better listen. "Y-y-yes, sir," he whispered.

"I apologise that we had to meet on such unpleasant terms, Harry. Was there anything else you wished to discuss?"

Harry finally remembered why he had come up here in the first place. "Yes, um…Professor, is it okay if I tell Ginny about the Prophecy? We've been talking a lot this summer, and I know she'd want to join with Ron and Hermione and help me."

The Headmaster looked thoughtful at that, as though he were weighing the possibilities. "Very well, Harry," he said. "If you feel Miss Weasley can be trusted, I also will trust your judgement. However, I must remind you again not to repeat the part that Voldemort has not heard. He may yet have spies hidden within the castle."

"And what about the horcruxes? Can I tell my friends about those, too?"

Dumbledore's face darkened. "Harry, horcruxes are the darkest of all magic. Their very existence is must be kept secret from the general public, both to prevent panic and to stop people who are so inclined from getting ideas, as the young Tom Riddle did. There is also very little we can do about them right now, so it would not be productive."

"But can I at least tell Ginny, sir?" Harry pressed. "Even if we can't do anything, I think she has a right to know."

"I don't think it would be good to alarm Miss Weasley with such revelations."

"Ginny's stronger than she looks, sir. And what she's guessed is close enough to the truth already. I want her to know what we're fighting."

Dumbledore's eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly. He had not missed the Harry's use of the word "we," which Harry himself might not have noticed. "I suppose that is reasonable," he conceded. "You may tell Miss Weasley…and her brother and Miss Granger, if you wish, so long as they tell no one else."

"Thank you, sir."

* * *

Ginny sat in the Common Room until everyone else had gone to bed. Ron and Percy had both enquired as to why she was staying up so late, but she pleaded her usual insomnia, and they left her alone. In truth, she was only here because Harry had pulled her aside at dinner and whispered for her to meet him here.

It was getting quite late. She was already tired from Quidditch tryouts that morning, where she'd made reserve Chaser, and she was starting to fall asleep over her Defence textbook when she heard someone whisper her name behind her.

She leapt from her seat and whirled around, wand in hand and her infamous Bat-Bogey Hex on her lips, only to blush with embarrassment when she saw that it was only Harry who had managed to sneak up on her.

Worse yet, he actually smiled at her, even though she had her wand at his throat. "Nice reflexes," he said.

She turned even redder and lowered her wand. "Merlin's beard, Harry, where'd you come from," she said.

"I'll show you," Harry said, still grinning. He took a large step back, unfurled a folded, silvery piece of cloth, and draped it around himself. And disappeared.

Ginny's mouth hung open. "You have a—?"

He took the invisibility cloak off again. "It was my Dad's," he explained.

"Harry, that's awesome!" she said, a little too loudly. "Does anyone else know about this?"

"Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, and Hagrid. I don't think anyone else does."

Ginny reached out and touched the silvery material. It felt like liquid silk under her fingers.

"Come on," Harry said. "We need to talk, but not here. Stay close." With that, he stepped beside her and threw the cloak around both of them.

"Um…okay…" she said, blushing again as she realised they pretty much had to walk arm in arm to stay close enough to hide under the cloak.

Harry led the way out through the portrait hole and down the corridor. "Keep an eye out for Mrs. Norris," he whispered in her ear. "We don't want her to hear us." Just before rounding the corner to Ravenclaw Tower, he stopped at a door that Ginny passed every day on the way to breakfast, but had never paid any attention to. A simple _"Alohomora"_ opened it (what the use was of having doors that could be unlocked that easily neither of them knew), and she found that it opened into a small tower.

"I've never been in this tower before," she whispered. "What's in here?"

"Storage, mostly," Harry said. "I think it might have been an armoury once." They climbed three flights and came to another door, which was obviously on the outside of the tower. Ginny didn't understand why Harry was leading her to this door until he opened it, revealing a small stone bridge, high above the battlements, connecting the small tower with Ravenclaw Tower. She knew at once where they were. The bridge was easily seen from the grounds, but she could guess hardly anyone ever paid it much mind. He took off the cloak, then led her by the hand onto the bridge and pointed up. She gasped. The entire dome of the sky was visible, the stars twinkling in the clear night air like thousands of fiery sparks. The view was as good as at the Astronomy Tower, but on the narrow bridge, she had the feeling of being suspended in space.

"Harry, it's beautiful," she whispered.

"I know. I started coming up here last year to think. I think it's the highest open-air part of the castle besides the Astronomy Tower, and a it's lot closer to the dorms. Less likely to get caught."

Ginny glanced toward the far end of the bridge, where a door led into Ravenclaw Tower.

"No idea. None of the spells I know will open it, and I've never seen anyone come out of it."

She wondered if Luna would know where it went. She was usually good about finding out things like that. Harry pulled the cloak off of them and sat on the bridge. Ginny followed suit.

"So what did you need to talk to me about?" she said.

Harry told her. He told her about the Prophecy and how he would need to fight Voldemort to the finish sooner or later. And he told her about Dumbledore's warning that it might well be sooner. Ginny, for her part, sat quietly and listened, though she grew increasingly pale, and tears started to form in her eyes. There wasn't really much she couldn't have guessed if she had forced herself to admit the obvious—but when combined with Trelawney predicting his death and him seeing the Grim at least twice now, it was truly alarming.

"Oh, Merlin!" she exclaimed, leaning over and hugging Harry. "He's really coming back, isn't he? Harry, what are you going to do?"

"Same as we planned. I'll ask Professor Lupin or someone for extra lessons."

"But what about the Grim?"

"I don't know," he admitted, adjusting his position so he could more easily put an arm around her. "Dumbledore says divination's a lot less reliable than real prophecies, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Is Dumbledore even sure the prophecy's true?" she said hopefully.

"Doesn't matter. _He_ thinks it is, so he's gonna keep coming after me until one of us is dead. But honestly, it's nothing new. Dumbledore hinted it to me in my first year. I just didn't want to think about it if I didn't have to. But there's something else, too…" And then he told her about the horcruxes and how he had destroyed not one, but two of them in the Chamber of Secrets.

"You mean…your scar?" Ginny breathed. If it were possible, she was more horrified about that than her own possession by a piece of Voldemort's soul.

"Uh-huh." Harry absently ran a finger over the now H-shaped mark. "The fang destroyed it by cutting it in two. That's what I meant about saving my life. He didn't come out and say it, but I don't think Dumbledore knew a way to get rid of it that wouldn't kill me."

"But that means…that means you could never have beat him."

"I know. It was really lucky, in the end. It's almost like it had to happen that way. It, um…well, it gives me a better chance to win, at least. And on the bright side, no more headaches. My vision's even got a little clearer. Madam Pomfrey had to transfigure my glasses."

Ginny smiled weakly. "When are you going to talk to Professor Lupin?"

"Next weekend, I think. If his next class is as good as the first one, anyway."

They sat for a while and talked about nothing in particular. It hadn't been a very cheerful week, and the prospects for the coming year didn't look much better, but they both tried to remember Harry's advice about being able to laugh about it. Harry wrapped his cloak back around them, just to keep out the cold, prompting laughs from both of them when they each found themselves talking to a floating head. They finally went back inside when they realised they were in danger of falling asleep out there—not that Ginny would have minded in principle (or even Harry, for that matter), but the chill in the windy air and the risk of sleeping past sunrise and being found out motivated them to go back.

The next morning, no one noticed that they had been gone, but their friends did note that both Harry and Ginny seemed to be in a better mood than the night before.

* * *

"Professor?" The door to Lupin's office was cracked open, so Harry pushed his way inside.

"Hold on—stay very still, Harry." The professor was standing in front of a tank of water, where a creepy-looking creature that resembled a scaly green monkey was standing on the lip, staring hungrily at him. He made a great flourish with one hand and bowed to the creature. The creature bowed back, spilling some water from the hollow on its head.

"Ha!" Quick as a wink, Lupin whipped out his wand and yelled, " _Stupefy_!" The creature was knocked backward into its tank. Another quick spell, and the lid slammed down on its head.

"A kappa," Lupin said, turning around. "Next week's lesson. Hello, Harry. How can I help you? Would you like some tea?"

"Um, sure, I guess."

"Sit down." He dug a dented tea kettle from his trunk and conjured up some boiling water to fill it. "I only have tea bags, but I can imagine you've had enough tea leaves for a while."

Harry stiffened. "You know about that, sir?"

"Professor McGonagall told us in case there were any concerns. You're not worried, are you?"

 _Yes, very,_ Harry thought, but he didn't feel like saying it. "I think I have bigger things to worry about, Professor."

"Ah…Sirius Black," Lupin said as he handed Harry a chipped teacup.

"Among other things," Harry said, taking a sip of tea. "Professor, I was wondering if there was a way I could get extra defence lessons—me and my friends. Like duelling and anything else we might need in a fight."

"Extra lessons?" Lupin set down his teacup. "Harry, if you're thinking of going after Black—" he said darkly.

"No! Why does everybody think I'm going to go after that lunatic?"

Lupin looked very uncomfortable and didn't speak for a minute. "I'm sorry, Harry. Why did you decide you need these extra lessons?"

"Well, ignoring the fact that I've nearly died somewhere about nine times in the past two years…" Lupin turned several shades paler at that. "Professor Dumbledore told me he thinks Voldemort is going to come back soon, and I'm eventually going to have to fight him."

Harry was pleasantly surprised that Lupin didn't flinch at the name. Instead, he just said, "Oh…so he told you, then…well, I suppose that's for the best. How many friends are you talking about? Ron and Hermione, I assume?"

"And Ginny. I know she's a year behind us, but she's pretty smart."

Lupin smirked at that, as if Harry had said something unexpectedly amusing, and then he looked almost wistful for a moment before he snapped back to reality. "Yes…" he said. "I think I can work with that. If you and your friends are willing to put in the extra time on the weekends, I would be happy to train you. If the four of you would come by, let's say after lunch tomorrow? Then we can all discuss it together."

* * *

To a student of muggle films, the room would have looked like the lair of a conspiracy theorist. In truth, that wasn't too far off, except that the master of the conspiracy was the one standing at its centre.

One wall was filled with a circle of names and pictures, with links to various positions—in the Ministry, in magical society, and in Azkaban. Another wall was filled with newspaper clippings and other documentation about what had happened in magical Britain since the end of the war. A third wall was dominated by the enemy forces—the structure of the Ministry and the members of Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix, along with speculations on major targets and possible weak links. The fourth wall, most empty, held the fruits of the most difficult task: tracing Lord Voldemort's movements for the past twelve years.

And the Tom Riddle who carried Ravenclaw's diadem stood at the centre of the puzzle, pondering his comeback—the Tom Riddle who was least informed of the four, having only possessed a student, and was thus the furthest behind. He needed to catch up.

"Master?" a very nervous Edward Avery said from the door, carrying a sheaf of parchment. Riddle turned around. "Master, I succeeded in copying those files from the Ministry, but…"

Riddle stepped toward him, his eyes momentarily flashing red. "But…what?" he hissed.

"Master, these same files have been accessed by others recently. Several times."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "How many times, Avery?"

"A-a-at least four."

Riddle's eyes widened before he snatched the parchments from Avery's hands and spun around. "Leave me," he ordered.

"Yes, Master."

Four others had accessed the files, he thought. He laid out the parchments on the table and began to go over the information they contained. There should be at most three more of him somewhere in Britain, and he had no way of knowing for sure if they were active. If four others had accessed the files, someone else—probably Dumbledore—was on to him.

He needed to move faster. Based on what Avery had told him, the easiest way to find out what he needed to know would be if one of his doppelgangers decided to assemble the Death Eaters, but Tom Riddle wasn't going to leave something so important up to anyone else, even if it was Tom Riddle. He quickly got to work on Avery's next assignment.

* * *

 **Summary**

This is as far as I wrote this story before I lost interest and started _The Arithmancer_ instead. The next few chapters would have had more character development with Harry and Ginny, including them starting special Defence lessons with Remus. They would meet Luna, including asking her about that high stone bridge and introducing her to their circle of friends. They would tell Ron and Hermione about the horcruxes, but it might not be right away.

The four Toms continue plotting in secret, and on Halloween, they all independently decide to make their move and summon the Death Eaters at the same time. This causes a lot of confusion with the Death Eaters being summoned to four different places, but they eventually sort it out and bring everyone together in Little Hangleton. Seeing four of them freaks out the Death Eaters.

When Sirius breaks into the castle that night, he meets Pettigrew at the door to Gryffindor Tower as Pettigrew tries to answer the summons. They get into a fight in front of many witnesses and are both captured. This leads to Sirius's exoneration in short order.

The four Toms change their names to avoid confusion, becoming the Brothers Gaunt: Cadmus (the ring, and the youngest), Corvinus (the diadem), Salazar (the locket), and Brogan (the cup, and the oldest). With practice, they are able to develop telepathic communication among themselves similar to Voldemort's connection with Harry in canon, and they lay plans to resurrect the "main soul" of Voldemort.

When they find Voldemort, he is surprised that there are four of them instead of three and soon figures out what happened with the horcrux in Harry. Because of this, he reluctantly does not make Nagini a horcrux. They resurrect Voldemort at the end of third year, using Mad-Eye Moody for the ritual. (The Gaunts do not have Voldemort-Prime's restriction against touching Harry, so they aren't worried about needing his blood.) Moody fails to escape alive, and Harry doesn't have visions, so Dumbledore has no proof that Voldemort is back.

At the end of third year, Harry finally puts his foot down about the Dursleys and because of this and various other events, he winds up living with the Weasleys at the Burrow behind powerful wards set up by Bill. The Death Eaters are broken out of Azkaban that summer while the Aurors are busy with the Quidditch World Cup, marking Voldemort's public return. The Triwizard Tournament is cancelled as the second war begins two years early.

However, there is dissension in the Death Eaters' ranks. The Gaunts come to realise that Voldemort only cares about them as protections for his soul and will imprison them in their horcrux vessels again if he fears they are at risk. They secretly plot to depose him and to steal Nicolas Flamel's research to recreate the Philosopher's Stone as a new path to immortality. Also, Bellatrix falls in love with Brogan, the physically oldest and most attractive of the Gaunts, and joins in their plot.

I know I could probably write a detailed outline for the war working from this summary. It would probably last about two years, and it would probably end with Voldemort-Prime being successfully deposed by the Gaunts, but the Gaunts being taken down by the Order and the Ministry with Harry and Ginny in the lead. But as I said at the beginning of this section, I just don't have much interest in writing another Hogwarts-years fic. I won't swear I'll never come back to it, but I'd be more interested in adopting it out if someone else wants to try their hand at it.


	8. Ferte in Noctem Animam Meam: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.

 **Introduction**

 _Ferte in Noctem Animam Meam_ is Latin for "Carry my soul into the night," and is the title of the song sung by the choir in the sixth movie. The idea behind this story is to flip all the Bad!Dumbledore tropes on their heads. In this story, Dumbledore knows about the horcruxes and genuinely believes from the beginning that Harry needs to die to defeat Voldemort, but he actually acts rationally about it. As Snape points out in this chapter, the appropriate thing to do is to treat Harry like a child with a terminal illness, and that is what he does. Dumbledore ensures Harry is well cared for and does everything he can to extend his life. He tries to hunt down the other horcruxes as soon as possible, but he also seeks to delay Voldemort's return as long as possible.

Harry struggles with the knowledge of his eventual death as he grows up. He has a complete breakdown when he looks into the Mirror of Erised and sees himself as an adult with a family of his own, for example. Yet at the same time, his self-sacrificing streak reaches the point where it becomes unhealthy, and Dumbledore confronts him about it.

I dropped this story because I realised I didn't have a plot that made sense. Most of my ideas for the later years involved rewriting canon scenes through the lens of this new premise to show Harry's emotional arc, without thinking about how Dumbledore's actions early on would completely derail canon from the start. It's a nice idea, but I never thought about it as seriously as I should have to make it a viable story.

This is the only chapter I have for this story. For a good take on a similar premise, I recommend _The Horcrux Within_ by althor42.

* * *

 **Ferte in Noctem Animam Meam: Chapter 1**

In the middle of the night on All Hallow's Eve, with the soft crunch of debris under his feet, a one hundred-year-old man carefully stepped through the ruins of a cottage in a quaint little village in the West Country. The place looked like it had been hit with a bomb, which wasn't too far from the truth, but the body of the young man with messy hair lying on the floor looked pristine—so pristine that he might almost get up at any moment. The old man stepped around the body with a tear rolling down his cheek, his long, silver robes sweeping like water over the rubble on the floor.

The air was still at this hour. The only noise in the cottage was the mingled sound of two voices crying upstairs, one clearly a baby, and the other a grown man. The old man put one hand on the railing and climbed the stairs in silence.

The second floor was in much worse shape, with most of the roof and parts of the walls torn away, leaving it exposed to the cold night air. The crying grew louder as the old man passed down the hall, finally coming to the remains of a nursery. There, he beheld the source of the sound. In a crib, seemingly unnoticed by the other occupant of the room, a little boy about a year old was crying in obvious pain, with a deep, red, zigzag-shaped gash on his forehead. The other person was a young man with long, black hair, who was weeping over the body of a young, redheaded woman. Even in death, the woman's green eyes were striking.

"Severus…" the old man whispered.

The young man's head snapped up, and he drew his wand in fear, before his expression flashed to anger. "YOU! You swore you would keep her safe! You promised—!" He ran at the old man, waving his wand furiously.

Albus Dumbledore easily dispatched his spy, forcing him back down to his knees. "I promised I would do everything in my power to keep them safe, and I did," he said sadly. "Lily and James placed their trust in the wrong person, Severus, and, in fact, so did we. Neither you nor I ever suspected that Black was the traitor."

Severus wilted under Dumbledore's piercing gaze. His own best efforts had failed. The one person he truly loved was dead. What was there left for him?

Of course, there was revenge.

Dumbledore turned and gingerly stepped toward the crib, where a child with a tear-streaked face was reaching through the bars and calling out, "Ma! Ma!"

"The boy?" the old man said.

Severus hadn't so much as looked at the child since he came in here. "The boy," he said lamely.

"You know he was Voldemort's real target." Dumbledore drew a single sherbet lemon laced with a mild calming draught from his pocket and handed it to the child, who ate it half-heartedly. "That cut is in the shape of the wand motion for the Killing Curse. Can you think of any reason it might have come from a different cause?"

"None," Severus admitted. "But then how is it he still lives, while the Dark Lord is…" He rolled up his left sleeve. The Dark Mark was faded and fuzzy, but still recognisable. "I don't even know what this means—not alive, but not yet dead."

"His mother's sacrifice, of course," Dumbledore said without hesitation. "The curse simply reflected off of him—a very rare, very obscure protection. Only with an explicit choice offered—and of course, as Voldemort places no value on love, he would never have bothered to learn about it. As for Voldemort himself, I'm afraid my theory is now confirmed."

"What theory?"

"Have you heard of horcruxes, Severus?"

Severus paled and staggered against the wall. "You think he made one, Dumbledore?"

"He must have done. How else could he be not alive, yet not dead?"

"So he will return, then?"

Dumbledore fixed Severus with a cold stare. "Oh, yes, he will undoubtedly return." He turned his attention back to the boy.

"He already looks like his father," Severus grumbled after a moment.

"But he has his mother's eyes."

Severus looked more closely at the boy's face and sighed. "He does."

Dumbledore cast a simple healing charm on the cut on Harry Potter's head. He was no healer, but he knew magical first aid. But the cut would not heal. It closed, but it remained as an angry red scar.

"Hmm…" He cast a simple diagnostic spell, one that would tell if there was dark magical residue impairing the healing. He was startled to see a black mist surround the boy's head. "Oh dear…" He cast a much stronger spell, one designed particularly to distinguish among the darker varieties of magic, but he was alarmed when the black mist appeared a second time, signifying something even darker than that spell could diagnose.

"Dumbledore! What is that?" Severus demanded.

"I…" he started. A horrible thought came to him—more horrible than any he had yet faced. The implications were too ghastly to contemplate, but he had to find out. He cast yet another charm, one so dark and secret that even Severus didn't recognise it, and his worst fears were confirmed when the black mist surrounded the boy—surrounded his whole body—for a third time.

"No…" he breathed. He stumbled back and collapsed into the one intact chair in the room, tears flowing down his face anew. "No…no…"

"What? What happened?" Severus yelled.

"I'm so sorry," he said, shaking his head. "We are in far greater trouble than I thought."

"What? How—?"

"Voldemort made more than one horcrux."

Severus staggered again in abject horror. "More than one! But…surely you can't mean the boy."

"I do, Severus, but I'm afraid it is even worse than that."

"Worse! How could it be worse?!"

"Because if Voldemort had only split his soul in half, this would not have happened. His soul was extremely weakened and fragile when he came in here—barely even still human. That is the only way that a piece could have broken off without the proper ritual. That could only be the case if he had made _several_ other horcruxes up to this point." Severus blanched and swallowed hard, looking like he was about to throw up. "His soul was so weak that his rebounding Killing Curse broke off a piece of it, which latched onto the only living thing in the room." He turned his face back to baby Harry. The prophecy was indeed being fulfilled, he thought grimly: neither can live while the other survives.

"Can you remove it?" Severus whispered.

"No. No method has ever been found to destroy a horcrux without destroying the vessel."

"So then…" Severus choked with sadness for the boy with Lily's eyes, the boy who was falling asleep under the Calming Draught, oblivious to all that was happening around him. "So then…he must die as well?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said flatly. He idly lifted his wand and levitated Lily's body to the side of the room, conjuring a sheet to cover it. "Though there is more. It will not be now, nor soon. Because of the prophecy—it is not safe for you to know all the details—but it must be by Voldemort's own hand when he returns, which will likely not be for some years."

Severus slumped against the wall, wishing for a place to sit himself, before he had the presence of mind to conjure a stool. "What horrible twist of fate—?" he growled. "What, then, will you do?"

The old an sighed. "I will take steps to give him the best life I can. The sacrificial protection placed upon him will protect him from the corrupting influence of the soul fragment. He will be able to have a normal childhood. There is no need for him to know his fate. Not until Voldemore does return, at least."

"No," Severus interrupted sharply. "He must be told, and before too many years go by."

"Severus, you can't mean—"

"Yes, I do. In the magical world, we so rarely have to deal with such a thing that you wouldn't understand how it works, but in the muggle world, if a child has a terminal illness, and they're old enough to understand, you tell them. You give them a chance to prepare and help them enjoy the time they have."

Dumbledore turned and regarded his muggle-raised, half-blood spy carefully. It was true, Severus Snape _would_ know more than he did about such things, though such an outpouring of concern was more than he had expected from the man.

"Besides," he continued, "if you truly care about destroying the Dark Lord, it would do no good to keep this a secret from the boy until the day of his death, only to have him abandon everything in fear and anger and ruin your plan."

If there was one thing that frustrated Albus Dumbledore about his spy, it was that, cold and callous as he could be, Dumbledore couldn't argue with his logic. And that assessment hit far to close to home for comfort. "Perhaps you are right, then," he admitted. "I will investigate the practises in the muggle world when I have the time. I fear we shall be very busy for the time being."

Severus nodded. "Yes, and in the meantime, we must deal with the other horcruxes as quickly as possible if we are to cut short his power when he returns. Do you know how many he made?"

"No. I can guess, but I can't be certain. Only Slughorn might know. I'll track him down as soon as I can."

Suddenly, there was a crashing sound downstairs, and a voice screaming, "James! Lily! No!" Dumbledore and Severus leapt to their feet, drawing their wands.

"Black!"

"Severus, wait!"

But then, another young man, also with long black hair, but a good deal more handsome than Severus and sporting a short beard, ran into the room, eyes flashing.

"Black! You betrayed them!" Severus roared.

"No—!" he yelled back.

"Avada—!"

" _No!"_ Dumbledore shouted.

But both of them were already on the move, hurling lethal curses faster than most wizards would be able to follow. Dumbledore could not let this go on. The old wizard raised a wand of ancient and terrifying power and waved it. Once.

Both men were hurled against opposite walls and frozen in place.

"Sirius Black," he said harshly, looking into the man's eyes, "did you betray James and Lily?"

"No! Peter was the Secret Keeper!" he said. "We switched without telling anyone to throw You-Know-Who off the scent. I'm gonna kill that rat when I find him!"

He looked carefully into Sirius's mind. Sirius knew Occlumency, but he wasn't good enough to fool Dumbledore. The old man turned around to face Severus. "He's telling the truth." He cancelled his spell, and both young men slumped down to the floor.

"That rat?" Severus growled.

"Peter," Sirius Black replied icily. "He's a rat animagus—grey with a bald spot on his head. I—" he collapsed against the wall in tears. "I said we should make him the Secret Keeper because no one would suspect him. Oh, Merlin!"

"Sirius, it was not your fault," Dumbledore said gently. "None of us suspected Peter. I know James and Lily would not have accepted him if they were anything less than certain. Right now, your godson needs you."

Sirius looked up, finally paying attention to the other occupant of the room. "Harry!" he ran to the crib and picked up the now-sleeping toddler in his arms. "Oh, Harry, thank God!" But he saw the lightning-bolt scar on the boy's head. "What happened to him?"

"Nothing good, I'm afraid," Dumbledore said. "I'm sorry that I must break it to you in this way, Sirius, but I know how dark your family is. Have you by any chance heard of horcruxes?"

Sirius very nearly dropped Harry on his head. "No…" he breathed, putting him back in his crib with trembling hands. "No, he couldn't possibly have—"

"Not intentionally."

"Not intentionally?" Sirius said in confusion. His mind started racing. "But the only way that could possibly—" His eyes grew wide. Being in the Black Family (though even there, things this dark were spoken of only in hushed whispers), he knew almost as much of the Dark Arts as Dumbledore did. As the pieces fell into place, he ran to the crumbling window frame and emptied the contents of his stomach over the outer wall of the cottage.

Dumbledore told Sirius what he knew and suspected about what had happened and what it would mean for the boy's life. By the end of it, Sirius was leaning over the crib, whimpering like a dog, "Oh, Harry…oh, Harry…" and weakly stroking the boy's hair.

"Dumbledore," Severus warned. "We've taken too much time already. If this place was under Fidelius, it's not safe now with the charm broken. And I suspect the Longbottoms are already at risk. If I know the Lestranges, they may be after them already." Dumbledore eyebrows shot up in horror. "We need to move quickly. What are we going to do with the boy?"

"I'll take him," Sirius said quickly. "I'll get Remus to help—oh, why did I ever suspect him?"

"You?" Severus sneered. "The Dark Lord's followers are still out there. What's left of your family will sell you out at the slightest hint."

"Well, I'm not going back to _them_ , Snivellus."

"No, Sirius, he's right," Dumbledore chided. "Harry will not be safe anywhere in our world. Do you realise how famous he will be for what has happened this night?"

"Then where—"

"I know that Lily had a muggle sister with a family or her own. Harry will be safest with them."

"Petunia?" Sirius barked out. "You can't do that! She hates Lily. She hates magic. She didn't even come to Lily's wedding."

"She called Lily a 'freak' from the start," Severus confirmed. "She was jealous and resentful before we even went to Hogwarts."

"I can't believe I'm agreeing with Snivellus, but yeah," Sirius added. "Petunia is completely unfit to raise a wizard."

"Which is why I am sure we will _all_ be keeping a close eye on them. But it must be done," Dumbledore insisted.

"Why? What could possibly possess you to think that's a good idea?" Sirius demanded.

" _Because_ ," Dumbledore said warningly, "Lily's sacrifice placed a protection of blood on Harry. If Harry is living with one of her blood relatives—and her sister is the only one she has—then I will be able to place a blood ward on the residence. It will be stronger than anything else short of a Fidelius Charm. No one who intends the boy harm will be able to enter."

Sirius wilted under his gaze, but he didn't give up. "So you're going to keep him alive with people who hate him just so he can die at the right time?"

"I am going to give him a _childhood_ , and, if he is lucky, a few years of adulthood, rather than him dying with his parents. That is the best that anyone can give him now. However grudging his relatives may be, I am sure that close monitoring by his wizard godfather will keep them in line."

"Hmm…" Sirius growled openly, but reluctantly seemed to accept this. "Does Petunia even know any…any other witches or wizards."

"I have met her," Severus said, "although she did not take too kindly to me."

"What a surprise," Sirius mumbled.

Severus ignored the comment. "The only other one would be McGonagall. She delivered Lily's Hogwarts letter."

"Right," Dumbledore said, moving to action. He picked Harry up from his crib. "Minerva and I will take Harry to his relatives and explain things to them. I will arrange for both of you to be able to contact them at your convenience. Severus, contact the Order and have them send a team to secure the Longbottoms. Sirius…I think we'd best wait to introduce you a little later."

"Fine." Sirius turned to leave.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to kill the rat!" he yelled behind him. "That'll be one less Death Eater to worry about."

"Sirius, wait!" Dumbledore called, but he was gone. "Severus, after you contact the order, try to follow Sirius," he said.

"What? Are you sure I'm the best person…"

"No, but you're all I can spare at the moment. Can you do it?"

Severus grudgingly nodded. "Yes, sir."

* * *

"What happened to the Dark Lord?" a wicked voice shrieked. "I know it was your plan—you and those blasted Potters! WHERE! IS! HE!"

"Pppp-pl-ppplease…I dd-don't n-n-know any-zing…" whimpered Alice Longbottom as she lay twitching on her living room floor. Her husband's screams and her son's crying could be heard through the whole house. They pain wouldn't fully go away anymore. Even when the curse was lifted, she felt numb and tingling all over. She'd seen what prolonged torture could do to people in the war. Already, she couldn't focus on anything. She knew her mind couldn't take much more of this.

A witch with a mass of curly black hair and a mad, desperate look in her eyes stood over her, screaming. "You're going to talk! _CRUCIO_!"

As the veil of agony descended again, Alice didn't quite notice as there was a loud crash, and the whole house seemed to implode. She didn't see as a dozen Aurors and Order members stormed the living room. She was only aware for a split second as the Cruciatus was lifted again, and she heard the enraged voice of her old mentor shout out " _Bombarda_!" before everything faded to black.

* * *

"We got here as quick as we could. How are they?" Augusta Longbottom was a formidable woman, and increasingly the captain of the politically influential Longbottom family as her husband's health declined. Henry Longbottom leaned on his wife and a cane as the two of them stood worriedly in the waiting room of St. Mungo's.

Miriam Strout stepped forward to face the tear-stricken couple. "Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom, I'm so sorry this happened. Let me say Frank and Alice were very lucky for the Aurors getting there when they did," she said. "I'm afraid there was a lot of nerve damage to both of them. The muggles call it 'neuropathy.' They will probably have trouble walking and using their hands, and possibly chronic pain. Their mental faculties were also damaged, though I've seen a lot worse. Their minds are mostly still all there, but they certainly won't be able to continue in Magical Law Enforcement, or in any job that involves intense cognitive tasks. It could have been far worse," she concluded. "I'm afraid they're never going to make a full recovery, but…they _will_ still be able to raise their son."

* * *

"Peter!"

Peter Pettigrew ran down the crowded London street. Oh, _why_ had he come this way? He should have apparated to the far end of the country when he'd had the chance.

"Peter, you traitor!"

Sirius, once his best friend, was on the warpath, and why not? Peter had just betrayed his other best friends to their deaths.

Then, things got that much worse. He heard the tell-tale cracks on Aurors apparating into the neighbourhood in the shadows. He was cornered. He could only think of one way out, and he'd have to do it fast. He whirled around, summoning what little Gryffindor courage he had left. "You! You betrayed the Potters, Sirius!" he yelled.

"Why you little liar—!"

" _Rictusempra_!"

"Huh?"

Startled by the _non sequitur_ , Sirius failed to dodge the spell. As he started laughing, Peter aimed his wand at a point in the street midway between them. There was a crowd of muggles milling about the street there, gawking at the public fight that seemed to be going on, but it was a little late to worry over killing people. _"Expulso!"_

The high-powered Exploding Curse blasted a crater in the street clear down into the sewers and spewed a massive cloud of smoke into the street. Peter ran toward it, and as he did, without even stopping to think, he aimed his wand at his own hand and cried, _"Diffindo!"_ Pushing past the pain he leapt into the crater and dropped out of sight on four legs.

* * *

Petunia Dursley saw who was standing at her front door and let out a loud scream.

"Albus, are you _quite_ certain this is our only option?" Minerva McGonagall muttered.

"I'm afraid so, Minerva."

"What are you freaks doing here?" Petunia demanded. "We don't want _your_ kind here."

"Every bit the stuck-up, petulant child I remember, Petunia," Minerva grumbled.

"Pet, what's going on?" A large, purple-faced man with no neck stepped up behind the woman.

"It's the freaks who run my sister's freak school, Vernon."

"What?!" Vernon Dursley roared. "Get lost! We don't want your kind here!"

"Unfortunately, that is not an option," Albus replied sourly. Vernon opened his mouth again, but the old wizard cut him off: "I'm afraid we are not the bearers of good news. Mrs. Dursley, I am very sorry to tell you that your sister and her husband were murdered last night by the dark wizard known as Lord Voldemort."

Petunia drew back as if she'd been struck. "What? Lily's… _dead_?" she whispered.

"Pet's sister?" Vernon said. "Murdered, you say?"

"I'm afraid so, Mr. Dursley, along with her husband. However, their son, Harry, has survived." He stepped to the side to reveal the little boy sleeping in Minerva's arms.

Petunia flinched back at the sight.

"Their son…" Vernon said darkly. "Now see here, if you think we're going to take him in—"

"That is, indeed, my request," Albus replied.

"We won't do it. We're perfectly normal, thank you very much, and we don't hold with _your_ nonsense."

"I told you, Albus," Minerva muttered under her breath.

Albus stood his ground: "I hope that you will first consider what I have to say."

"Well, we won't. Now, get off our property," Vernon snapped.

"Vernon," Petunia pulled him back. "Be careful. I've told you what they can do."

But he shook her off and said, "You can't make us take him."

"We could," Albus countered, "but it would defeat our purpose. However, we _will_ insist that you be fully informed of the situation." Vernon growled impatiently, but held his piece. "Lord Voldemort, the murderer in question, was severely weakened by a very powerful magical discharge caused by Lily sacrificing her life to save her son." Petunia squeaked in surprise. "However, he is not dead, and his followers are still a very real threat. They will be looking for young Harry _and_ anyone associated with him. If you were to take him into your home, I would be able to provide far better magical protections for all of you against them."

Petunia's eyes slowly widened in horror through those revelations, but Vernon was unconvinced: "What are you going on about, old man? I don't care what some nutter's doing to your lot. We're staying out of it."

"Vernon, please," Petunia said fearfully. "I know you don't like it any more than I do, but this is very dangerous. That man, he's a…like a magical terrorist." She whispered the word "magical" like it was something unclean. "He's been terrifying their lot for years. Lily told all kinds of horrible stories about him. Most of them are afraid to even speak his name, and he could do…unspeakable things to normal people like us."

"Then what the hell are you doing trying to attract him here?" Vernon bellowed.

"Voldemort and his followers likely already know your identities as Lily's relatives," Albus said, raising his voice a little. "I am seeking to protect both you and Harry from him. The protections I can place around Harry will be much stronger if he is living with a blood relative, and the only ones he has left are in this house."

"And they'll protect us?" Petunia asked, cutting Vernon off. "And our Dudley, too."

"They will, Mrs. Dursley. If you will permit us to come in and explain the situation…"

She took a deep breath and nodded reluctantly. "Alright, come in before the neighbours see you."

Albus and Minerva entered the house and looked around. The inside of Number Four Privett Drive, like the outside, was perfectly manicured and proper, except for the trail of destruction left in the wake of the Dursleys' young son, who looked rather less like a toddler than a large, pink, and very fussy beach ball in a blue bobble hat, and who screamed loudly in disapproval of the company.

"Thank you, Mrs. Dursley," Albus said once Dudley was, with difficulty, brought under control. "By way of introduction, my name is Albus Dumbledore, and this is Minerva McGonagall. If you wouldn't mind having a seat, I will explain everything."

And so, over the next half hour, the Dursleys learnt far more about the world of magic and the war against Voldemort than they ever wanted to know. Albus explained in detail the magic that had protected Harry from the Killing Curse and the wards he would place on their house. It was clear that they wanted nothing to do with the whole thing, but—mostly at Petunia's promptings—they grudgingly relented to care for Harry in exchange for the protection they would bring.

"I still don't like it," Vernon insisted. "We don't want our Dudley mixing with that sort."

"Magic is not catching, Mr. Dursley," Albus said dryly. "As your wife knows quite well." Petunia paled even further and sucked in a ragged breath. "I promise you that your son will remain precisely as ordinary or out-of-the-ordinary as he is now."

"Hmm…and what about money? Kids aren't cheap, you know—that's why we wanted to stop at one."

"You will be compensated five hundred pounds per month from Harry's trust fund for his care and provision. I think that would be most generous."

 _That_ got the Dursleys' attention. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Now, while you are raising him, I have arranged for two individuals will be paying regular visits to ensure Harry is doing well." Albus continued. "His godfather, Sirius Black, and Lily's childhood friend, Severus Snape."

"What?" Petunia exclaimed. "That awful boy?"

"Severus has become a quite respectable young man, Petunia. He has made some serious mistakes in his life, but he has overcome them and is now unquestionably loyal and a highly talented Potions Master—what you would call a chemist."

Petunia seemed incredulous: "Really? _Severus_?"

"Indeed."

"A chemist, eh? I guess…I guess it's not _that_ bad of a deal, Pet," Vernon tried to rationalise it.

"No, I suppose not," she admitted.

"I am glad you feel that way," Albus said halfheartedly. "However, there _is_ one more thing you need to know before you make a final decision."

"There's _more_?" Vernon grumbled.

"Sadly, there is." Albus pointed at Harry's forehead. "That is no ordinary cut. It was caused by the darkest of magic, and it did far more damage than is externally apparent, and it will continue to do harm over time…You may think of it as similar to what you call a genetic disease." The Dursleys flinched. "I stress that I do not anticipate any serious health or behavioural problems. However…I am afraid that he _will_ die young."

Petunia looked over at the little boy who was still lying sleepily in a cot—so much smaller than her own son, despite being only a month younger. She may not have liked her sister—and how hard it was to see her eyes half-lidded in his sad little face—but it was impossible not to feel sorry for the toddler upon hearing that news. "Oh, the poor boy," she said in spite of herself.

Vernon's thick eyebrows rose, and his moustache twitched. "How young are we talking about?" he said a little too eagerly.

"Vernon," his wife hissed.

"I am hopeful that he will live long enough to complete his schooling and enter adulthood," Albus said, sending Vernon a chiding look.

"Oh…" Vernon tried not to sound disappointed. "And I expect you'll want us to deal with _that_ , too."

"In this case, no, Mr. Dursley. Harry will need some special care, yes, but Severus will look after that problem. Your doctors would not be able to help him in any case."

"I should clarify that some counselling will likely be advisable in the future," Minerva spoke up. She had been mostly quiet, but she didn't want any mistakes here. "But we will handle any urgent needs that come up."

"Counselling, eh? And what'll people say about _that_? A nephew that needs _counselling_ , honestly…"

"Now, Vernon, perhaps this can work for us," Petunia said. Her gossip skills were racing, and she wanted to dissuade any further disputes with the wizards. "My… _poor_ sister and her husband, killed in…a car wreck, we'll say, and we took in their sick little boy out of the goodness of our hearts—no one will have a problem with that."

Minerva rolled her eyes in her boss's direction with an unspoken comment of, _Really, Albus?_

"Well, there _is_ that…" Vernon admitted. "Alright, Mr. Dumble…Dumble…"

"Dumbledore."

"Right, you. You've got yourself a deal." He offered his hand to shake, although he conspicuously wiped it on his jacket after Albus did so.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Dumbledore," Severus said. "They had already arrested him by the time I got there. Crouch and Fudge saw him laughing in the middle of the destroyed street. They have a dozen bodies, and a dozen living witnesses to Pettigrew calling Black the traitor."

"Then we must get to the Ministry at once," Dumbledore replied. "It will be much easier to clear this up if we can intercept them before he is sent to Azkaban."

"Of course."


	9. Strange and Dangerous: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine, but JK Rowling's.

The opening quotes are taken from _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows_ and _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_.

A/N: This was written before we knew that Credence survived the first _Fantastic Beasts_ movie, and about half of it before the movie was released in the first place.

* * *

 **Introduction**

The short version is, this is an Obscurial!Harry story, but there's a catch: I came up with the idea before the first _Fantastic Beasts_ movie was released. It was originally solely based on Harry developing the same condition as Arianna, before we knew what that condition was. It was going to be a Tonks-centric story with Harry being adopted by Andromeda and Ted, with Nymphadora as his big sister. At Hogwarts, it would have been Hufflepuff!Harry with Justin, Susan, and Hannah as his close friends, and Dora staying on as McGonagall's assistant.

The problem was, _Fantastic Beasts_ came out, and that was great because we found out a lot more about Obscurials, but it was a problem because I knew I'd have to include Newt and Tina Scamander in the story, and I felt like Newt's personality clashed with the plot I had been setting up. I can't exactly quantify that, but he seemed a little too quirky, perhaps, for the story I was trying to write. I tried to mesh the two together, but it just wasn't working for me. Plus, it would have been another Hogwarts-years story, which made me even less enthusiastic, so I dropped the idea.

It's a shame because I've been hoping someone else would write a full-length Obscurial!Harry story. The closest one I've seen is the _Obscure Guardian_ series by startabby on AO3, which is decent, but it isn't really the full treatment I'm looking for. There's definitely an opening for one, but I haven't seen any yet, and I just don't think I'm the one to write it.

This is the only chapter I have for this story.

* * *

 **Strange and Dangerous: Chapter 1**

" _When my sister was six years old, she was attacked, set upon, by three muggle boys. They'd seen her doing magic…What they saw scared them, I expect…they got a bit carried away trying to stop the little freak doing it._

" _It destroyed her, what they did: She was never right again. She wouldn't use magic, but she couldn't get rid of it; it turned inward and drove her mad, it exploded out of her when she couldn't control it, and at times she was strange and dangerous. But mostly she was sweet and scared and harmless."_

* * *

" _Before wizards went underground, when we were still being hunted by muggles, young wizards and witches sometimes tried to suppress their magic to avoid persecution. So instead of learning to harness or to control their powers, they developed what was called an Obscurus."_

* * *

For about four years, Harry Potter's life was one of the worst of any child's in Britain. And then, it was all downhill from there.

Vernon and Petunia Dursley wanted a perfectly normal life—wanted it with an unhealthy fixation borne of a reaction against the skeletons in Petunia's closet: a very much abnormal sister and her equally abnormal family. And when that sister's abnormality got her killed, they were saddled with her infant nephew against their will.

Petunia was determined that the skeletons in her closest should stay there, and she took that literally. Little Harry's cot was placed in the cupboard under the stairs, but unfortunately for Harry, sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs was just the start. Four years of only having his basic needs met, being spanked hard and often and unfairly, and not knowing love in any meaningful sense quickly took their toll on his mind, just as not being fed properly and being made to do all the chores he was physically able took their toll on his body.

Merope Gaunt, facing not too dissimilar hardship, felt her magic go dormant, weakening until she couldn't cast the simplest spells to support herself and her unborn son. The young Tom Riddle, in contrast, embraced his magic and used it to get what he wanted. In another life, Harry Potter, a boy who wore his emotions on his sleeve and was rubbish at Occlumency, would never have learnt the control needed to repress his magic, and it would have leaked out as accidental magic, turning his teacher's hair blue and Apparating him up to the school roof like any other magical child.

Unfortunately for Harry (and his relatives), the years of abuse _did_ instill that desire for control in him. Accidental magic was punished swiftly and severely, and even though he didn't know what it was, his relatives ensured that he knew in no uncertain terms that any such strange incidents were a result of his "freakishness" and were to be condemned. Thus, when his magic tried to protect him, he fought against the unknown force that had so angered his aunt and uncle and took the abuse instead, and the accidental magic stopped—at least when he was awake.

When he was asleep, however, Harry's subconscious mind was in control, and his magic, repressed by abuse and his own efforts and fed by his darkest fears and pains, became twisted, dark, and lashed out at his oppressors. The modern Ministry of Magic should have detected the high levels of accidental magic and intervened before it got too bad, but with the wards around Privett Drive, their readings were a little off.

Any three-year-old in the magical world could have seen the danger, even if they had never heard the word _Obscurus_. Any competent magical parent and even a lot of the muggle ones could have figured out something was wrong when it was still at the level of night terrors accompanied by accidental magic—before it became terminal. And any half-witted muggle knew that increasingly strange and destructive things happening around an abused child were a recipe for disaster according to practically every book and movie ever.

Apparently, Vernon Dursley didn't have half a wit to spare.

It wasn't the first incident in which a dark, amorphous mass ripped the cupboard door from its hinges and embedded it in the opposite wall that did it. It wasn't when the dark mass blew out every light bulb in the house and the streetlights on the street outside. It wasn't even when Dudley's entire gang of six-year-old bullies was knocked flat by something no one could see. No, the final straw was when the Dursleys were awakened by a crash in the middle of the night, and looked out the window to see that Vernon's car looked as if a tree had fallen on it—except there was no tree.

The six-year-old Harry Potter knew he was in trouble when he was hauled from his cupboard and slammed against the wall. As usual, he didn't know what he was in trouble _for_ , but that was the furthest thing from his mind right now.

"YOU LITTLE FREAK! I KNOW YOU DID IT!" Vernon bellowed. He'd brought his belt downstairs with him, and he made vicious use of it. Harry screamed and tried to cover his face. But then, something happened that the Dursleys hadn't seen directly: the lights flickered and dimmed, as if something were absorbing the light from them.

"Vernon, stop!" Petunia screamed, finally noticing something was wrong, but it was too little too late.

"I'LL TEACH YOU TO USE THAT DAMN MAGIC!" Vernon roared. In a rage, he did something he had not done before. He turned the belt around. Swinging as hard as he could, he struck with the buckle on Harry's back once. Twice. Three times.

"AHH! NO! PLEASE! STOP!" Harry cried. The lights went out completely and struggled to brighten again. A rumble went through the whole house and shook it to its foundations.

"VERNON!"

"DADDY!"

"STOP THAT! STOP THAT!" Vernon yelled. With a year's worth of pent-up frustration, he swung the belt again. "STOP—!"

 _Snap!_

What seemed to be a dark, amorphous tentacle of shadow shot out from Harry's back and wrapped around the belt in midair.

"—that?"

And then it happened. Vernon Dursley had about half a second to realise just how big a mistake he had made before an enormous dark mass burst out of Harry's body, filled the room, and struck with the force of a freight train.

 _BOOOOOM!_

An explosion as large as the one that had rocked Godric's Hollow five years ago tore through Number Four Privett Drive and shook the entire town of Little Whinging. Vernon's body was blasted out into the street along with the entire front wall of the house—official cause of death: massive blunt force trauma, although the coroner couldn't make sense of the strange, almost scale-like markings carved into his skin. Neighbours were awakened as pieces of the ceiling rained down all over the neighbourhood, and Petunia and Dudley were crushed when most of the upstairs collapsed onto the downstairs, later to be found with the same strange markings on their faces. In seconds, all three Dursleys, including all of Lily Potter's remaining relatives, were dead.

Five minutes later, a very old man with a long, white beard appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the wreckage with wand drawn. But he saw no Death Eaters and no Dark Mark, and the residue of dark magic was of a very different kind. He searched quickly, sifting through the horrific devastation, and in the middle, he found a little boy, lying in a crater, crying, delirious, and clutching his head.

Then, as the old man approached, he saw the buckle-shaped welts on the boy's bare back and the distinctive markings on the victim's bodies, and in that moment, Albus Dumbledore knew just how big a mistake _he_ had made.

* * *

Dumbledore was in tears as he carried the unconscious Boy-Who-Lived into the Infirmary at Hogwarts. "Poppy, please come quickly!" he said.

"Albus, what—Merlin's beard!" Poppy Pomfrey cried as she saw the boy in his arms. "What happened? Here, put him on the bed. Who is that? Why did you bring him?"

The old wizard laid Harry gently on the nearest bed and tucked him in. Pulling Poppy back a pace, he told her quietly, "This is Harry Potter, Poppy. _Do not_ wake him up," he warned.

"Harry Potter?" Poppy said. "What? Why? What's wrong?"

"I've made a terrible mistake, Poppy," he said quickly. "I responded to an alarm at the house where he was living with his relatives, only to find the house destroyed and young Harry the survivor."

Poppy gasped: "The whole house? Did Death Eaters find him after all these years? Did You-Know-Who come back?"

"Oh, how I wish it were that simple. The markings left on the bodies were unmistakable." He barely whispered the words. "It was an Obscurus."

Poppy turned deathly pale at the word and fell in a swoon to sit on the nearest bed. "How? Obscuri are so rare—oh, the poor boy! Why did this happen?"

"Abuse, I'm afraid," Albus said sadly, "as it nearly always is. Abuse that was far too much my fault for placing him with relatives who would do that to a child, all for the sake of a magical protection. Abuse that I fear my own actions helped make the Ministry blind to. And now, I fear I have done damage that can never be fixed—worse than even Voldemort did to him."

"Albus, I…I'd help if I could," Poppy said. "I can fix his injuries, but what else do you want me to do? There's no helping an Obscurial child. I don't know how to begin to treat him. No one does."

"That is where you are wrong," Albus said. "There are a few who have worked with Obscurial before. I have, but I am the least of those. I will ask the others I know to help. Things are not quite as hopeless as they appear."

This did little to assuage Poppy's despair. "If anyone can help him, it's you, Albus," she said, "but is he even safe to be here? I mean…an _Obscurus_ …"

"If there were students here, I would be gravely concerned, but as the school is empty, Hogwarts is the best place for him. But I must go for help at once. Make sure he's comfortable. Make sure he doesn't panic. And Poppy, the boy's magic is dangerously unstable. You _must_ keep him sedated until I return."

* * *

It was rare for Aberforth Dumbledore to see his brother come into his pub, but it was far rarer for him to see his brother in tears.

"Albus? Is that you?" he said with a concern he hadn't thought he'd still possessed. "Bloody hell, who died? You look like a wreck!"

Albus just shook his head as he took a seat at the bar. He didn't try to contradict his brother—which was rather worrying, actually. Aberforth briefly considered some bizarre ploy on his brother's part, but no, he seemed genuinely grief-stricking. Aberforth could think of only one reason why Albus would react like that without him knowing anything: Gellert had died in prison, and—

"Aberforth, I am in desperate need of your help."

—and those were the words he had never expected to hear. "…Uh…What?" he said.

"I have made a terrible, terrible mistake."

 _What? What? What?_ It wasn't Gellert? What mistake could be big enough that Albus felt the need to confess it to his brother? Unfortunately, the only response he could come up with was, "Really? Well, it's not your first, is it? You ought to be able to handle that on your own."

"I will not argue with you, Abe. I am begging your help. In this matter, your skills are greater than mine."

"Oh, _really?_ After all these years, you've found something I can do better than the great Albus Dumbledore." His tear-stricken brother just sat there. "Alright, I'll bite. Whose life did you ruin this time?"

"H-Harry Potter," Albus breathed.

"Harry Potter?" Aberforth said incredulously. "Your Golden Boy? The Boy-Who-Lived? You managed to screw _him_ over? Good Lord, what happened to him?"

Then, something else unexpected happened. Albus leaned forward, clapped his trembling hands on Aberforth's shoulders, and whispered, "The same thing that happened to Ariana."

Aberforth's brilliant blue eyes widened to the size of saucers in shock and anger. He wanted to hex his fool of a brother into next week, and Albus would probably let him in his present state, but he forced the urge down. He was determined to be the better man and show that he had his priorities sorted. "We'll need Scamander, you know."

"I've already sent Fawkes with a letter to him."

"And we'll need _you_ to butt out."

"Abe—"

"Don't Abe _me_ , Albus. _You_ _'re_ the one who screwed up with Ariana. _You_ never understood her. You never tried to comfort her. You were just one more selfish wizard who saw her as a dangerous force to be feared and controlled."

"You know that's not true—" Albus said softly.

"Of course it is!" Abe snapped. "Or if you didn't at first, you certainly did after Mother died, and you gave up your plans of world domination for her. How _noble_ of you."

"The two of you needed me—"

"Bah! I already had my O.W.L.s, and I could have taken care of her better than you ever could."

"It wasn't like that! I was protecting her from Gellert."

Abe stopped. "From Gellert?" he said.

Albus shook his head furiously. "Gellert never wanted to leave Arianna behind, Abe. He wanted to leave _you_. Ariana—he wanted to _use_ her—the same way he wanted to use Credence Barebone. In her Obscurus form, she was more powerful than I am—more powerful than _he_ was. She was to be his ultimate weapon, but she would have been miserable. I had to protect her from that. I should have told you years ago."

Abe fumed so furiously that the bar around him began to smolder. "Albus, so help me, if you tell me you killed her to 'protect' her—"

"Gellert killed her Abe. I told you that years ago, and I wasn't lying. He told me after our final duel that she threw herself in front of a curse meant for you."

They were both silent for a minute. Abe did remember that conversation. Ariana had sacrificed herself for him, in the end. Albus sighed heavily: "I told you I would not argue with you today, and I am already struggling to keep that promise. I wronged Ariana, Abe. I wronged her grievously when she was already ill. I will not make that same mistake again. I need your help to ensure that the boy remains well and that, perhaps, with modern healing and mind-healing techniques, he may recover enough to attend school."

"Attend school, Albus? Are you mad? It'll be a hard enough task just to keep him alive, not to mention the threat to others."

"I know that, Abe, but there is a longer-term concern that I cannot ignore."

"What?" Abe growled. "Another one of your schemes? Haven't you done enough to the boy already?"

"Enough, and more," Albus agreed, "I've become painfully aware of my own shortcomings tonight, but alas, this one is out of my hands. Aberforth…I never told you about the prophecy."

"Prophecy? What prophecy?"

"The prophecy of the one who will defeat Voldemort."

Aberforth processed this groaned: "Oh, bloody hell, you _really_ bollocksed it up this time, didn't you?"

"As succinct as ever, Aberforth," Albus said.

Abe glared at him. "You're asking a lot, Albus…I'll do what I can, though."

* * *

Newton Scamander was surprised to see a phoenix burst into flame in the middle of his laboratory late in the evening when he ought to be going to bed—surprised and worried. Fawkes's arrival could only herald an urgent matter from Dumbledore. He read the letter the bird proffered him and sucked a breath in horror. He immediately began buttoning everything down in his case and hurried to wake his wife.

"Tina! Tina, wake up!" he called, shaking her. "We are needed at Hogwarts at once!"

"Hogwarts?" Tina said blearily. "Why? What's happening."

"Our worst-case scenario, I'm afraid," Newt replied. "We have an Obscurial in Britain."

Tina was wide awake at once and moving for her wand. Even after all these years, her Auror instincts hadn't dulled—she couldn't afford that, working around all the beasts her husband did. "An Obscurial?" she snapped. "How? Is it anyone we know?"

"Dumbledore said he'd explain when we got there, but he told me…Tina, he told me it's Harry Potter."

"Harry Potter?" she gasped. "The one who—"

"The very same. The Obscurus killed his foster family. He's stable for now, but he needs expert help immediately."

"Which is you, of course."

"Which is _us_ , Tina. Come on."

The Scamanders hurried to Hogwarts, where they were greeted by a sight they hadn't seen in a long time, though at the same time not long enough: the Dumbledore Brothers standing together, looking very grim.

"Albus, I got your letter," Newt said. "Is the boy here."

"He's up in the Infirmary," Albus replied. "You're willing to help?"

"Of course we are," Tina said. "Well always help a child who's going through that, the poor dear."

"Let's go," Newt started for the Infirmary. "What happened, and how is he doing, Albus?"

Dumbledore quickly explained what he had seen on Privet Drive as they made their way to the Infirmary, not glossing over his own part in the matter. Tina started to chew him out for screwing up a simple child placement, but she didn't really have time to get warmed up before they arrived. Newt quickly made his way to Harry's bedside to examine his new charge. Madam Pomfrey had healed his bruises and other injuries, and while he still looked thin and pale, he slept peacefully on the bed, looking perfectly harmless.

"He's doing as well as he can be, considering the circumstances," Pomfrey said. "What do you make of it?"

Newt waved his wand over the boy a few times. "He's exhausted," he concluded. "Even an Obscurus tires out after a while. He should sleep until morning, although you should give him a small dose of Dreamless Sleep, just in case."

"Already done. I'm not risking an Obscurial nightmare in my Infirmary."

"Good. Well, Albus, I can tell he's magically very strong," Newt continued. "That's good for him—not so good for anyone around him. But we've caught it early. I think if we can help him face his fears and bring it under control, he might be able to overcome it."

Albus frowned. "You speak as if Harry will have to live with this illness indefinitely," he said, "You told me once that you thought you could remove an Obscurus without hurting the child."

"But I failed, Albus," Newt said sadly. "The Sudanese girl all those years ago—the shock of removing it killed her. I might be able to improve the process, but it still wouldn't be without risk, and it would have to wait till Harry's stronger to try it regardless. Modern Mind Healing techniques combined with the methods you used to help your sister plus have a better chance of success."

"Our sister killed our mother!" Aberforth protested.

"Which was a tragedy," he agreed, "but you still had a better track record with her than any other Obscurial I know about, and knowing what we've learnt since then, Harry should be better off still."

Albus nodded slowly: "If you believe you can help Harry in any way, Newt, I will support you. Just tell me what you need."

"A safe place for him to live," Newt said. "Not cut off from the world, but isolated enough that he won't hurt any neighbours if things go wrong. And equally important, he'll need a family. Not just guardians, even good ones, but a mother and father—preferably ones who knew the Potters—who are willing and able to give him all the love and care a young wizard could ask for. To give him the best possible chance of survival, he'll need a real family."

"The property I can do, Newt," Albus said, "but not much of his family is left. That's why I couldn't find a better placement for him in the first place…But I will examine the Potters' associates in the morning to see if any of them are able to provide for him."

* * *

Albus looked at many possibilities, but in the end, there really was no other option. He walked up the front steps of a small house in a quiet, spread-out muggle neighbourhood and knocked on the door.

"I got it!" a bubbly voice called from inside, and a moment later, a young, purple-haired teenager opened the door. Upon seeing Dumbledore, her hair turned white. "Headmaster?" she said. "Whatever it is, I didn't do it!"

Dumbledore forced a smile. "Good morning, Miss Tonks. Is your mother here?" he asked.

Nymphadora turned around and back into the house, yelling, "Mum! Dumbledore wants to talk to you!"

Andromeda Tonks came to the door a minute later. "Professor, what are you doing here?" she asked.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, Andromeda, but I must speak with you on a matter of some urgency." He glanced at Nymphadora, who was peeking around the doorway. "In private."

Andromeda looked back and closed the door behind her to keep her daughter out of the conversation and conjured a privacy screen around them. It was now that she noticed the grave look on Dumbledore's face. "Professor, what's wrong?" she said. "Has something happened?"

"I'm afraid it has, Andromeda. I'm sorry to report that last night, the muggle relatives of Harry Potter, whom he was living with, were killed."

"My God," she gasped. "Harry Potter? Was it Death Eaters?"

He shook his head: "Would that it were that simple."

"Is Harry alright, at least? Is he alive?"

"Alive, yes. Alright, no. Harry has developed a serious illness that requires expert healing from a trusted source—more than Madam Pomfrey can provide. I had hoped that given your connection to his family—"

"Yes, of course I'll help any way I can. But what kind of illness is it?"

Dumbledore had tears in his eyes as he answered: "I'm afraid Harry has developed an Obscurus."

Andromeda felt faint and nearly collapsed. What horrors had she fallen into? No one she knew at St. Mungo's had ever so much as seen an Obscurial child. "An Obscurus? Dumbledore, that's a terminal disease!" she said. "Not to mention dangerous!"

"Both facts are exaggerated," he replied. "There _are_ techniques that can manage the disease, and there have been two known cases of an Obscurial surviving past the age of ten."

"They still died, didn't they?"

"Yes, but not from the disease. They were both murdered by people who feared and coveted their power. I believe that with adequate help, Harry may yet overcome it."

"You're insane."

"Perhaps."

She waited for him to say more—or leave—but he didn't. "What do you want me for?" she asked.

"I want you to help look after him."

"Now you're _really_ insane," she said flatly.

"I know I have no right to ask this of you, Andromeda—no right to ask you to take on this kind of risk. Especially because it was my own mistakes that caused this mess in the first place. You would have help, I promise you. But the only other choice for Harry is an indefinite stay in St. Mungo's with a small chance for survival. The boy has no family left. Most of James and Lily's friends are dead or otherwise unsuitable. You are Harry's nearest surviving relative who isn't in Azkaban or married to a Death Eater. You could take him in, if only on a nominal basis, and give us the stability he needs for us to help him."

"Isn't there a procedure to place him with a guardian?" she pressed.

"Since he has no immediate family, he would be placed up for adoption by the Ministry, which is one of the worst things that could happen to him right now. Instability, uncertainty, the risk that his new guardians would be more interested in his fame than his well-being or would be those who line the pockets of the Ministry. This cannot happen. However, under certain laws, distant cousins have preference over strangers. Legally, that will be either you or Narcissa, and since the Potters didn't recognise you being disowned, you have the stronger claim. Moreover, with your Healer's training, there are few witches better equipped to handle a child with special needs, whereas your sister…"

"Cissy wouldn't know which end to put the nappy on without an elf to help her," Andromeda finished for him.

"Quite."

"But surely James and Lily made provisions for Harry's care."

"Yes, but the claim is yours there as well. The Potters listed a number of preferred guardians in their will. An unusual move, and not entirely enforceable, but given the state of the war, a reasonable one. Their list was Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, the Longbottoms, Peter Pettigrew, you and Edward, and, as a last resort, Lily's sister. You are the only ones left on the list who are in a position to take him."

"What about Lupin?"

"Confidentially, I'm afraid I must inform you that Remus Lupin is a registered werewolf. He is not eligible. James and Lily included him as a symbolic gesture." He paused and waiting to see if she had another objection, but she stayed silent, albeit still looking very unhappy with the idea. "You would not need to be Harry's primary caregivers—although it would certainly help—as long as he had stability and a loving family to support him. You would also not need to be his primary Healer. Indeed, I have already secured an expert to help."

"An expert in Obscurials?" Andromeda said in surprise. "Who?"

"Newt Scamander. He has more experience with Obscurials than anyone else alive. He may even be able to cure Harry completely, although that remains to be seen. He and his wife have already agreed to help. Additionally, I have secured my brother's help."

"Aberforth? How can he help?"

Dumbledore lowered his gaze. "One of those cases I mentioned, Andromeda—an Obscurial who survived past age ten—was my sister, Ariana."

Andromeda backed off a half step. She'd never imagined Albus Dumbledore had tragedy like that in his past. "I'm…I'm sorry," she stammered.

"It was a long time ago," he said, "and I'm afraid I was never very good with her, but Aberforth, he was the only one who could bring her out of it every time. Even Mother…failed. I know there is still something of the kind boy I once knew in my brother. He is willing to try, at least. So I assure you, if you do this, you will not be alone."

Andromeda closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She considered the possibilities. It didn't sound like as bad a deal as it had at first. Could she do it? Could she risk Nymphadora being around…that? Could she live up to James's and Lily's memories if she didn't?

She made her decision: "I'll have to talk it over with Ted, but…if he's comfortable with it, I'm willing to try."

Dumbledore sighed with relief: "Thank you Andromeda. Please come up to Hogwarts as soon as you're ready. There is little time to lose."

"When we're ready, you'll be the first to know, Professor."


	10. Wish Fulfilment: Chapter 1

Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter, and most of these tropes are so overused, good luck trying to trace who came up with them.

 **Introduction**

 _Wish Fulfilment_ is what happens after you read one too many cliche, formulaic Super!Harry fics. It was supposed to be a parody of all the ridiculous Super!Harry tropes, but it wound up being incredibly meta and unwieldy, and it never really worked. I eventually found _The Rise and Fall of Harry J Potter_ by Muffliato, which does it far better than I ever could, even though it's unfortunately unfinished.

The idea here is that there are _Harry Potter_ storybooks in-story, like there are in so many fanfics, but these books tell an over-the-top Super!Harry story that's so ridiculous and obviously wrong that no one could possibly believe them. Harry starts reading them, and he and his friends mostly just point out all the absurd tropes.

Then there was also this meta-narrative where the books were secretly written by Auror Dawlish and filled with thinly-veiled references to the current Ministry as evil characters and traditionalist purebloods as good characters. This might sound like a silly and overcomplicated addition, but the point I was trying to make was that Super!Harry tropes like abusive muggles, family magic, noble houses actually promote the pureblood ideals that canon opposes, so a pureblood sympathiser would be the kind of person who would write something like that. As you can probably see, it was completely unworkable, and I gave it up pretty quickly.

This is the only chapter I have for this story, and that's probably for the best.

* * *

 **Wish Fulfilment: Chapter 1**

Staying at the Burrow was the best month of Harry Potter's young life, especially after being locked in his room and fed through a cat flap by his horrid relatives. Without having school work to worry about—well, not as much; he hadn't been able to start his summer reading before he'd got here—it was probably the most carefree month he'd ever had.

He really enjoyed hanging out with Ron all day, and Fred and George were great, too. Mrs. Weasley was a bit overzealous, but he liked her, not least because of the great food that he didn't have to cook. Mr. Weasley was a nice bloke, though he could get a bit tiresome with all his questions about the muggle world. And Percy was Percy.

The one Weasley he didn't have a good handle on was Ginny. Ron's little sister always seemed to freeze up around him and lose the ability to speak. It was pretty awkward, actually. Even with his limited social experience, he could tell she had a massive crush on him, and he could guess it was because of his fame. He wanted to make the effort to get to know her, but it was hard when she kept running away and peeking at him from behind a corner.

One morning, rising early, as usual, Harry went downstairs and was surprised to see Ginny was also up, curled up in a chair, and reading a book. He decided to try to approach her. He still hadn't succeeded in actually talking to her, but he kept trying. He sat down in the chair next to her and said, "Hi, Ginny, what're you reading?"

"Eep!" she squeaked, looking up at him. "Ha-Ha-Ha-Harry, hi," she said in an unnaturally high voice. "This is—this is nothing—just a…silly little kids book. Bit of rubbish, really…" She tried to scoot away from Harry and hide the cover of the book from him, but he leaned in, and his keen eyes picked out the title.

" _Harry Potter: Heir to the Founders_ _…_ by Johann Dahlerus."

"It's not what it looks like! It's just…crazy stories they tell about what could happen while you're at Hogwarts."

"Er, people are writing about me? At Hogwarts?"

Ginny was trembling with nervousness. "I-i-it's not really about you, exactly," she said. "There's not any real people in the story. E-e-ven Dumbledore's replaced by a woman named Mildred Baggett, and she's a bad person."

"Seriously? That's weird. We'd _really_ be doomed with an evil Dumbledore."

"Oh no, you win in the end. She just tries to manipulate you into sacrificing yourself to the Dark Lord Bartholomew Cromwell so she can take the credit for killing him, but you defeat both of them with this amazing elemental magic…" She trailed off as she saw Harry staring at her with an utterly bewildered look on his face. "Er…sorry…" she said, somehow managing to blush even harder. "I told you it's just crazy, silly stuff."

"Actually, that sounds kind of interesting," Harry replied. "Could I read it when you're done?"

"What? B-b-b-but…okay." Ginny hesitated a moment, then handed him the book. "Here. I've read it all before," she said.

"Wow, thanks, Ginny."

She nodded wordlessly and then stood up and bolted from the room. Harry shook his head as he watched her go. She was a strange one alright, but nice. He leaned back in the chair, opened the book and started to read. Within a few minutes, though, he said something he never expected to say: "Oh my God, I didn't know how good I had it!"

* * *

Half an hour later, Harry was shocked by what he had read. It was like a train wreck. He couldn't look away. He had to keep reading until the oppressed boy, "Harry Potter, Heir to the Founders" was rescued by his parents' long-lost friends, Alvin Runkle and Corvinus Yeager, who had been kept away from him by the machinations of the wicked Headmistress of Hogwarts, Mildred Baggett, who wanted him to grow up downtrodden and perfectly malleable by her.

Harry was used to people in the magical world treating him oddly by now, but he had never encountered anything this _weird_ , and it worried him. What if some people actually believed it? It was that thought that led Harry to seek out Ginny again. He found her in the garden, complaining to her brothers about not letting her in on the Quidditch game they were organising.

"Hey, Harry! We're going out to the paddock," Ron called. "You wanna come?"

"Maybe in a minute," Harry called back. He turned to see Ginny getting to make a run for it again, so he said, "Ginny, wait."

She froze and stared at him, wide-eyed.

"I wanted to talk to you about the book," he said, holding it up for her to see.

"Wh-wh-what about it?" she stammered. "I t-told you it's just silly stuff."

"Yeah, I know, but…well, honestly, Ginny, your parents actually let you _read_ this book? People don't actually believe this, do they?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know I live with my aunt and uncle, and they're pretty awful, but I've never been anywhere like that nightmare orphanage in the book."

"Oh, _that_ ," she replied. "Sure, everyone knows you went to live with your relatives. That's what Dumbledore said from the start. The book is sort of like, what if it all went wrong?"

"Oh, okay. I was just wondering because this stuff is crazy. I thought my aunt and uncle were horrible, but I'd take being locked in my bedroom again over the maniacs in this book any day."

"Really?" Ginny squeaked in surprise, remembering the state Harry was in when her brothers brought him in.

"Well, sure. In the book, I was sent to a muggle orphanage that's like out of _Oliver Twist_ or something. Supposedly, I was regularly beaten, starved and made to sleep on the floor. My relatives are awful, but they'd never do anything like _that_. I mean, sure, they weren't giving me much to eat last week, and Aunt Petunia's whacked me with a frying pan a few times over the years, but I'd be dead if I lived like the Harry in the book."

"Your aunt hit you with a frying pan?" Ginny said, as if that were the important thing. Well, actually, Harry realised, it probably _was_ the important thing, since it was real life, but still, his point was that it wasn't nearly as bad as the story.

"It was never that hard," Harry defended—Wow, that was weird; he was actually _defending_ his relatives. "I think she was mostly trying to scare me. Still, this thing is way worse."

"What are we talking about?" a cheerful voice said. They turned to see Mr. Weasley coming out to the garden.

"Hi, Mr. Weasley," Harry replied. "I was just reading this Harry Potter book Ginny had."

Mr. Weasley's face fell. "Oh, no," he said, "Ginny, you actually _showed_ Harry those things?"

Ginny turned bright red with shame, so Harry jumped in, saying, "I asked her if I could read it, Mr. Weasley. I just wondered what people wrote about me."

"Ah. Well. That's a good thing to know about. But I should warn you a lot of the things in _those_ books are pretty absurd."

"I could tell. Do wizards actually believe this stuff, Mr. Weasley? About how I'm treated like dirt in an orphanage and stuff?"

"No, of course not. It's well-known that you live with your mother's family, Harry, even if they don't know the…unfortunate details. That stuff's just there to make you look more heroic."

"That's good. I wouldn't want people thinking like this Johann Dahlerus person. He must think muggles are absolute animals."

"I know," Mr. Weasley said in annoyance. "I've never been comfortable with that part of it. I only bought it because you were so keen on wanting all of the Harry Potter books, Ginny. That's why I bought you all those other books where muggles are nice people."

"I know they are, Dad," Ginny said. "All the muggles we've met have been nice."

"That's right. They're not so different from us, except they can figure out eckeltricity and aeroplanes."

Harry had to suppress a laugh at that point.

"Well, Harry, I don't mind if you keep reading those books if Ginny doesn't," Mr. Weasley told him. "Just don't be surprised to find a whole lot of other ridiculous things in there."

"Thanks, Mr. Weasley. I understand."

* * *

Ginny's book only seemed to get more bizarre as he kept reading. It was clearly written by someone who hated muggles and who wanted to make Harry out to be some kind of super-powerful saviour. He honestly didn't think it was that well-written, but he figured his name on the cover alone probably carried it well enough.

After being rescued, Book-Harry then underwent some tests to find out more about him, and he learnt that he was heir to two of the founders of Hogwarts: Gryffindor on his father's side, and Ravenclaw through a long line of squibs on his mother's side. Wouldn't that be nice, he thought. But things only got stranger as the tests continued and he was given all sorts of obscure titles and abilities. But Harry's criticisms were quickly forgotten when he got to the next chapter, pushed aside by more pragmatic interest. "Hey, this could actually be useful," he said. "Why didn't I ever think of that before?"

Later, when they went to Diagon Alley, Harry was ready to try his idea. To pass the time as he waited, he queried Mr. Weasely again: "Mr. Weasley, what is elemental magic?"

"Elemental magic? Well, it's actually two kinds of things. One is that any spell that manipulates one of the four elements—water, earth, fire, or air—is called an elemental spell. But there's also elemental magic in legends and folktales. The story goes that some rare people, like wizards are to muggles, are so powerful that they can control one of the elements without a wand. Sort of like what muggles call pixie tales."

"Fairy tales," Harry corrected.

"Right, fairy tales. Why do you ask?"

"Well, in that book, it says I'm some kind of elemental mage or something, and I'm going to beat the bad wizards with fireballs."

"Oh…" Mr. Weasley grew hard-faced again. "I wouldn't put much stock in anything that book says, Harry," he warned. "Magically speaking, it's about as factual as _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_."

"Who?"

"Beedle the Bard? Wizard 'fairy tales'? No?"

Harry shook his head.

"Oh. Well, the point is, a lot of the magic in there isn't real."

"I understand Mr. Weasley," Harry answered. _But it wasn_ _'t the magic I was thinking about._

Their first stop was Gringotts, where Harry and the Weasleys both needed to visit their vaults. While Hermione and her parents were changing money, a goblin was called to lead the rest of them to the carts.

"Greetings, noble goblin," Harry told him. "May your gold always flow."

All of the Weasleys and the goblin gave Harry a strange and confused look, and he blushed and lowered his head. _That_ didn't go off so well.

"What was that about?" Ron whispered.

"I was trying to be polite," Harry said.

Percy shook his head: "Goblins are practical beings, Mr. Potter. Excessive politeness annoys them more often than not."

That was a surprise to Harry. That greeting had come from Ginny's book. He knew a lot of it wasn't accurate, but he had thought they would get basic facts about the magical world right.

Sufficiently chastised, he played it more cautiously with what he really wanted to ask. The Harry in the book had got a lot of help here, but now, he wasn't so sure. When the cart came to a halt, he said, "Um, excuse me, Mr…?"

"Gornuk," the goblin grunted.

"Mr. Gornuk, I was wondering if…Gringotts has any legal services."

Gornuk looked at Harry like he was stupid. "And _why_ would you ask _that_ Mr. Potter?" he demanded.

"Well, it's just that my muggle relatives are really awful, and I'm pretty some of the stuff they've done to me is illegal, and I was wondering—"

" _No_ , Mr. Potter, I meant why would you ask that of _us?_ I would think you would want to take something like that up with _your_ Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

Harry wasn't sure what to say to that. He really hadn't expected a flat-out dismissal. "I, uh, was just wondering if there was anything you could do—"

"And why on _earth_ would you wonder that?"

"Um…If you had any special legal services for your customers—"

"Mr. Potter," the goblin said in an aggravated tone, "we run a _bank_. We handle _money_. We are _goblins_ , not wizards. Even if we were in the business of law enforcement, which we are not, and even if we took any interest at all in the private affairs of wizards, which we don't, we wouldn't have the jurisdiction to punish offences committed in the muggle world, now, would we?"

Harry was speechless. His entire view of goblins from the book was turned on its head. The Harry in the book had had the goblins go after the brutal owners of the orphanage for him straightaway and sentence them to a life of hard labour in their gold mines, and here, Gornuk was just looking at him like he was from Mars. But he was right: why _would_ the goblins get involved in something like that? And why would wizards let them? "I…didn't really think of that, Mr. Gornuk," he said awkwardly.

"Ugh. Wizards," Gornuk griped. "Just _where_ did you get these wild ideas, Mr. Potter?"

"Well, there was this book—" Harry started, but Gornuk immediately started growling.

"A bit of free advice, wizard—and listen well because that is something extremely rare in Gringotts. Most wizards know _nothing_ of how goblins operate. They make no effort to learn our culture, and they would rather concoct their own fantasies from whole cloth than actually talk to us. You should be cautious in trusting an actual _history_ book about goblins, let alone an admitted fiction."

Harry was taken aback. He didn't realise that even a wizard who wrote fiction would be so sloppy about something like that. "Oh…Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I'm kind of new to the magical world."

"Hmpf," Gornuk said. "I will not begrudge you, Mr. Potter, _this_ time, because you are young, inexperienced, and muggle-raised, and you have been misled by an absurd book. However, I warn you that you are only the latest in a long line of wizards who think that if they spout off some supposed secret goblin greeting or because their great-grandfather was nice to us once, that we'll suddenly fall all over ourselves to be their friends. In the real world, that's a good way to 'accidentally' get redirected to the wrong department, or worse."

"Oh…" Harry said nervously. Considering that some of the 'departments' had dragons in them, that didn't sound like a very good thing. Although wizards surely wouldn't have much tolerance for goblins actually _hurting_ wizards in the bank. Right? Well, he decided it wasn't worth the risk to find out.

However, when they got to his vault, he realised he _did_ have one more question. More carefully than last time, he said, "Mr. Gornuk, do you know if I have any…other vaults here?"

"Other vaults?" the goblin said suspiciously. "Are you a business owner, Mr. Potter?"

"No."

"Then almost certainly not. And I can't imagine why you would _need_ them."

"Well, there's only gold in here. I was wondering what happened to my parents' stuff."

"I would suspect it's in storage with _your_ Ministry, wizard. What you see is what you have."

"Oh. And if I had any distant relatives who, er, died in the war or something?" Harry said carefully.

"Ministry records. In the unlikely event that you find something, bring us notarised documentation, and we'll release it to you."

"Alright. Thanks, Mr. Gornuk."

Gornuk rolled his eyes at the courtesy, but that one really was just Harry trying to be polite. Maybe he would take up his questions with the Ministry, like Gornuk said, he thought. Deciding he would ask Mr. Weasley about whom he could write a letter when he got the chance, he successfully got out of Gringotts without annoying any more goblins, and he and the Weasleys rejoined with Hermione's family to do their shopping.


	11. The Sorting Hat's Mistake

Disclaimer: Gryffindor! Hufflepuff! Ravenclaw! Rowling!

* * *

 **Introduction**

This is the first new story idea that I fleshed out and wrote up after starting _Scribble Pad_. I actually considered making this a self-contained one-shot, but I feel like this first chapter can't quite stand on its own. It's too much exposition. We need to see the consequences of this Sorting to really make it work, so I'm adding it to the anthology.

This story is based on the fanon idea that muggle-borns are either excluded from Slytherin or face dangerous persecution in that house. In _Deathly Hallows_ , Scabior says, "there ain't a lot of Mudblood Slytherins," meaning there are still a few. The premise here is that the year before Harry starts at Hogwarts, a muggle-born Slytherin was murdered by his house-mates, and the Sorting Hat takes matters into its own proverbial hands to break the back of Slytherin's pureblood hegemony. Here's how it starts.

* * *

 **The Sorting Hat** **'s Mistake**

"How d'you think we get Sorted?" Harry whispered to Ron in the antechamber.

"I dunno," Ron said. "Fred told me we had to wrestle a troll."

"A troll?" Hermione Granger squeaked.

"Could be," said another boy who's name Harry hadn't learnt yet. "My brother says a kid died in the Sorting last year."

The new first-years gasped. They wouldn't let them do something that dangerous, would they?

"Don't be ridiculous," a girl said. "That wasn't during the Sorting, it was a fight between a couple of Slytherins around Christmas. It wasn't even a first-year."

Most of them sighed with relief, but Hermione squeaked even louder. "A student died last year?" she said in horror.

"Yeah. I heard there there was this big duel, and it trashed their whole common room."

"I heard it was two on one," another voice added.

"What were they fighting about?" asked Neville Longbottom.

The girl shrugged. "Slytherin politics, I guess. You know how they get into dark magic there. They always have something to fight about." Half a dozen other kids nodded sagely.

Professor McGonagall returned and escorted the new first-years into the Great Hall. Harry was initially awed by the sight, but his mind soon turned to his mounting fears. Was Hogwarts really so dangerous that students killed each other? How had something like that happened? And what if he was Sorted into Slytherin? Would he be in danger here like he was with the Dursleys? Voldemort was in Slytherin, Hagrid said, and all the other bad witches and wizards. What if people still liked Voldemort in Slytherin and hated Harry because of it?

He became so consumed with his thoughts that he barely noticed when Professor McGonagall brought in a stool and set a tattered old hat upon it. But then, something happened that was strange even by magical standards. The Sorting Hat opened its brim, and everyone else was shocked when, for the first time in a thousand years, it didn't sing. It spoke.

"This is not a year for songs," it said. "This is a year for mourning and reflection. I tell you this plainly so that, perhaps, some good can come of it. For the new first-years, I am the Hogwarts Sorting Hat, and it is my job to Sort you into your Houses."

Harry stared. They were supposed to be Sorted by a hat?

"I have bragged in the past that in all my centuries of Sorting students, I have never made a mistake," the Sorting Hat said. "No matter how badly a Sort turned out, I could always find the thread that tied them back to the essential qualities of their house. But never before has my choice resulted in the death of a student before they even left the school. So tonight, it is with a heavy heart that I must tell you I was wrong."

A flurry of whispers broke out around the Great Hall. Many were confused, especially the first years. Many of the older students where whispering their theories about what this was about and what the Hat would do.

"Some eight months ago," the Hat said, "just before Christmas, Andrew Macdonald was murdered in these very halls! Andrew was a fourth-year muggle-born boy whom I Sorted into Slytherin. Yes, there are a few of them for those of you who don't pay attention. Andrew was brilliant, as clever as they come and more than able to hold his own in a game of wits. And he dreamed of going far in the magical world. In short, he was the finest that Slytherin House had to offer, and he would have floundered in any other. But he was murdered by two sixth-year Slytherins who were offended that a muggle-born would dare to grace their house."

Hermione gasped loudly. She looked terrified at the news. Slytherins hated muggle-borns enough to kill them? Harry was surprised, too. He still didn't understand how it had happened.

"Those murderers are dead now," the Hat continued, "but Slytherin as it now stands has many other lesser abusers and bullies, along with those who enable them, agree with them, or merely give their tacit approval. This cannot stand!

"I have thought long and hard over the past eight months about whether I made a mistake in Sorting those boys to Slytherin. Did I make a mistake with the murderers? No, they were both well-suited to Slytherin, and I could not have known what monsters they would become at the age of eleven. Andrew then? He was so well-suited to Slytherin that it would have been an absurdity to send him to any other house, but after careful thought, I have come to understand that I _was_ wrong. The correct Sorting for Andrew Macdonald should have been…Beauxbatons!"

Louder gasps filled the Hall. The Sorting Hat send a student out of the school? It was unthinkable! Scandalous! Harry began to get nervous for an entirely different reason. Would the Hat send him away too? Would it say Hogwarts was too dangerous for him and make him go back to the Dursleys?

"I should have protested loudly to the Headmaster that _none_ of the four Houses of Hogwarts would both make that boy happy _and_ keep him safe. I should have torn open the violence and prejudice within Slytherin House for all to see instead of muddling through and trying to keep it stable as it was.

"For a thousand years, I have sat on this stool and Sorted every student who came through those doors. And for a thousand years, I have watched with dismay as I divided them, broke up friendships, and fed prejudices. Not since Salazar Slytherin left this school have the four houses been truly united. Always Slytherin has stood apart despite the best efforts of the teachers, and its divisions are deeper now than they ever have been. Now, I see it is my curse to quarter every year whether it is good for Hogwarts or not, and I am no longer content to merely watch. I will Sort because I am compelled to Sort, but I will not be passive in the face of threats that would tear apart the school from within.

"You have heard my warning. Heed it well. Now, let the Sorting begin."

Dead silence filled the Great Hall. Harry looked around. The teachers appeared just as stunned at the students. Even Professor Dumbledore looked faintly surprised, though he soon settled into a solemn expression. "Well, that was certainly enlightening," he spoke in a kindly voice. "Professor McGonagall, I believe the Sorting Hat has directed for the Sorting to proceed."

Professor McGonagall looked between Dumbledore, the Sorting Hat, and the first-years. "Yes, I suppose so, Professor Dumbledore," she said nervously. "When I call your name, sit on the stool and put on the Hat to be Sorted…Abbott, Hannah."

Hannah Abbott stepped forward, shaking from head to toe. She looked like she might faint before she even reached the stool. Professor McGonagall took her hand and helped her sit down, then placed the Hat on her head. It was oversize, so it dropped down over her eyes. The entire Hall waited with bated breath. The Sorting Hat had not said what action it would take. Just what was it about to do?

"HUFFLEPUFF!" the Hat shouted.

Hannah yelped in surprise, then whipped the Hat off her head. She was crying with relief as she stumbled down to the Hufflepuff Table, which began cheering for her.

A moment later, Susan Bones also went to Hufflepuff. After her, Terry Boot became the first Ravenclaw. Mandy Brocklehurst also went to Ravenclaw, and Lavender Brown went to Gryffindor. So far, no one acted like anything unusual was happening. But then…

"Bulstrode, Millicent," McGonagall called.

A large, square-jawed girl walked forward and sat on the stool. The Sorting Hat considered for a moment and said, "HUFFLEPUFF!"

Millicent's eyes were wide when she took the Hat off her head. Evidently, that was a surprise to her. Still, no one else was making a scene about it, so she took her place at the Hufflepuff Table quietly.

Michael Corner went to Gryffindor next, then Stephen Cornfoot went to Gryffindor as well, and then Vincent Crabbe was Sorted into Hufflepuff.

"What?!" came a shout, but it didn't come from Crabbe. It came from Draco Malfoy. "That can't be right!" Crabbe just stood there dumbly, looking confused what to do.

Professor McGonagall turned to look at Malfoy with uncertainty in her eyes. "That is between Mr. Crabbe and the school," she said. "We will examine this closer if need be. Mr. Crabbe, please take your seat at the Hufflepuff Table."

Crabbe went. Tracey Davis was next, and she was Sorted into Ravenclaw. Harry thought she looked faintly disappointed, but she didn't object to going to the Ravenclaw Table. However, whispers were starting to break out. Ten students in, and there was not a single new Slytherin. Kevin Entwhistle became the eleventh—another Ravenclaw. Would the Sorting Hat simply refuse to Sort anyone to Slytherin this year? Was it going to end the house on its own?

"Finch-Fletchley, Justin," McGonagall called.

Justin went forward to the stool, and the Hat had a rather long conversation with him. Harry could see the boy's lips moving. He wondered what they were talking about. Finch-Fletchley sounded like a muggle name, upper-class at a guess. Would that mean something?

Suddenly, the Hat shouted, "SLYTHERIN!"

Everyone jumped at the sudden outburst. Justin held his head high as he walked to the Slytherin Table. So the Sorting Hat wasn't ending the house, but Harry could hear the whispers. Justin was muggle-born, the same as the boy who had been murdered. Hermione watched him go in surprise, but didn't say anything.

The Sorting went on. Seamus Finnigan went to Gryffindor. Malfoy seethed when his other flunky, Goyle, also went to Hufflepuff. Hermione Granger had an even longer conversation with the Hat than Justin had, but she eventually went to Slytherin, much to Harry's surprise. She had been terrified of Slytherin a few minutes ago. What had happened? She didn't seem a bad kid, either. Meanwhile, Daphne Greengrass went to Ravenclaw and sat down next to Tracey.

Neville Longbottom sat on the stool for nearly five minutes, and people whispered that they were _sure_ he was going to Hufflepuff before the Hat shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!" No one seemed more surprised by that than Neville himself, who ran off while forgetting to take the Hat off his head.

Then, came Malfoy's turn. He also spent a lot of time with the Hat on his head. Harry couldn't hear what they were saying, as much as he wanted to. If he could, he might have been surprised to hear the Hat say, "If I had it my way, Mr. Malfoy, you would be a Gryffindor. But I'm afraid I can't send another student to his death. And it would be all the worse if that death came at the hands of his own father. Do you deny it? You know what your father is capable of. But I still think a different house will do you good, so let us hope you excel in…RAVENCLAW!"

To Harry's great surprise, Malfoy didn't protest at his own Sorting like he had at Crabbe's and Goyle's. In fact, he looked rather shell-shocked, walking off to the Ravenclaw Table in silence.

Shortly afterward, Theodore Nott also went to Ravenclaw. Pansy Parkinson and Padma Patil were both Slytherins, while Padma's twin sister, Parvati, became a Gryffindor. That certainly got a reaction. Twins Sorted into Slytherin and Gryffindor? The two girls stared at each other in horror across the Great Hall before they took their seats. The Hat had mentioned breaking up friendships. It couldn't be easy on families either, Harry thought.

But then, it was "Perks, Sally-Anne," and then…"Potter, Harry."

Harry began to walk forward, and the whispers around him intensified. After all the strangeness that had happened already, where would he go? He'd heard his parents had been in Gryffindor, but with the Sorting Hat defying expectations for so many, it wouldn't surprise him if it put him somewhere else. He saw all eyes on him as the Hat dropped over his own eyes.

"Interesting. Very interesting," a small voice said in his ear. He almost didn't recognise it as the same voice shouting the Sortings to the Hall. "Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. And you have a thirst to prove yourself. That's what I was hoping to see. Hmm, yes, one very obvious choice. No doubt about that."

Harry gripped the edge of the stool. _Not Slytherin_ , he thought.

"Not Slytherin, eh?" the Hat said. "The fact that you say that is the very reason I'm trying to reform Slytherin. I'm sure you've heard it's dark, but many good and noble witches and wizards have come from Slytherin too, no doubt about that. Merlin himself was a Slytherin, and a friend to muggles, to boot."

 _But what about Voldemort? Do people still like him in Slytherin?_ he thought worriedly.

"Oh, some do, but you won't be in danger there. The Headmaster will make extra certain of that. And most of them don't. Slytherin isn't _that_ bad—or it won't be when _I_ _'m_ through with it! Besides, I don't think you want to be in Ravenclaw with Draco Malfoy, do you?"

Harry remembered Malfoy's arrogant attitude. He definitely didn't want to be in the same house as him. Hufflepuff didn't sound very like a very good house, and not just when Malfoy talked about it. Hermione Granger had thought Gryffindor was the best, but then she went to Slytherin.

The Sorting Hat chuckled. "Yes, you would do well in Gryffindor," it said, "but I'm moved a few people around from where they might have gone. Gryffindor isn't the best for you right now. You have no experience with the magical world, and that's not always easy, but you'll find more people you can relate to in Slytherin this year in any other house. Don't dismiss that. No, there's only one choice for you. I'm sure that you'll be great in…SLYTHERIN!"

The Great Hall erupted in shouts of protest. The Gryffindors were indignant, and the Weasley Twins shouted, "That's rubbish!" At the Ravenclaw Table, Draco Malfoy seemed to be trying to murder Harry with his eyes. The Slytherins' response was mixed—some applauding, especially the first-years, and some looking surprised or angry. But as Harry stood up, he tried to take the Sorting Hat's words to heart. Justin Finch-Fletchley and Hermione Granger were already there. He'd have someone he could relate to. He took his seat near them, and the Sorting continued.

The two people who made the biggest scenes actually turned out to be Zacharias Smith, who was Sorted into Slytherin over his loud protests that he was a direct descendant of Helga Hufflepuff; and Ron Weasley, who was Sorted into Hufflepuff despite all of his brothers being Gryffindors. Personally, Harry thought that if Ron wanted to stand out from his brothers, going to a different house was a good way to do it, but Ron didn't look happy. His Twin brothers at the Gryffindor Table simply looked too shocked to react to _his_ Sorting. But they could still be friends, Harry thought. He tried to give Ron an encouraging wave across the Hall, to which he weakly responded.

In the meantime, Sophie Roper and Dean Thomas, both muggle-borns, both became Slytherins. Harry heard whispers around him that they made four new muggle-born Slytherins in all, which was high for any house in a given year, let alone this one. Finally, Blaise Zabini was the final Slytherin and the final Sorting, and the feast could begin, but it wasn't the joyous occasion it usually was, especially for the thoroughly rattled Slytherin House.

Professor Dumbledore rose from his seat at the High Table, still looking solemn. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts," he said. "I wish I could say it were under better circumstances, but indeed, troubled times are upon us. You have heard the Sorting Hat's warning, and I repeat it now. There will be no tolerance for violence in this school. Too long has Hogwarts allowed divisions between houses to grow and prejudice of blood to fester. This must stop, or else the school will tear itself apart.

"The murderers of Andrew Macdonald were killed last year in an act of legal self-defence when they attacked another muggle-born student who proved more capable than they. The threat from them is over, but I fear the sentiments that drove them to such violence remain. Therefore, I have instructed the teachers and staff to be vigilant for acts of bullying and bigotry of any kind, and I call on our prefects and our new Head Boy and Girl to aid us in ensuring the protection of _all_ the students of Hogwarts. Together I have hope that we will make this year the start of a bright new era at Hogwarts, and with that, I say, tuck in."

Distracted as he was, Harry didn't notice the feast appear on the table until Justin offered him some potatoes. He was startled to see the amazing assortment of food that appeared before him. But he also looked around and saw people eyeing the knot of five muggle-raised students uncomfortably. Finally, one of the older boys spoke up: "So, Potter, pretty exciting for your first night at Hogwarts, yeah?"

"Uh huh," Harry said. "I guess it normally doesn't go like that?"

"No. The Sorting Hat usually sings a cheerful song. And there aren't many big surprises for who goes where. But tonight there were about six kids from families that _always_ go to Slytherin who wound up going somewhere else…I'm Adrian Pucey, by the way," he introduced himself, and Harry shook his hand.

"And a bunch of muggle-borns ended up here," another boy pointed out unhappily.

"Cool it, Cassius," Pucey said. "What'd you expect with what the Sorting Hat said. We can still have Slytherin pride with them."

"Did someone really kill the two murderers last year?" Hermione said with wide eyes.

Pucey frowned. He lowered his voice and leaned closer: "Yeah. Down at the end of the table. Robert Wallace. See him?"

Harry looked to the end of the table where an older, sullen-looking boy sat with just a couple of friends, separated from the rest of their house. He looked like he might be a seventh-year.

"He did it, and they said it was justified," Pucey told them. "The thing is, a lot of us aren't so sure it was really above board. It was technically self-defence, but he was definitely looking for a fight."

"What happened?" Harry asked.

"The thing you have to understand, Potter, is that the Sorting Hat normally sends one muggle-born to Slytherin every other year. We talked it over, and we think it only sent the ones who really couldn't go anywhere else to us, but no more than it had to. With one every other year, there were just enough for the older ones to protect the younger ones if there was any trouble. But something went wrong."

"What?"

"Those same two guys attacked Wallace the year _before_ last. He was a fifth-year then. He fought them off, but he got hurt, and his parents got scared and wouldn't let him come back." Pucey glanced at the five muggle-raised students knowingly. Many of their parents would surely feel the same way. "He told his folks Macdonald and Church—the other muggle-born below him—would be in danger without him here to protect them, but his folks didn't listen and made him go to Beauxbatons for the year.

"By the time Christmas came, and Macdonald was murdered, Wallace had come of age. No one can prove it, but we're pretty sure he ran away from home on Christmas Day to come back here and go after the murderers. He was _furious_. I though he might just start cursing people randomly. Before the end of Winter Holidays, one of them had picked a fight with the other—no one's sure who—and the two killers wound up dead. It wasn't pretty."

Another older girl spoke up: "So if any of you muggle-borns are afraid, don't be. Everyone here's too scared of Wallace to try anything."

Dean, Justin, and Sophie all seemed to be relieved by that, but Harry and Hermione exchanged a glance, and he could tell she agreed with him that he wasn't so sure about the whole thing.

This was going to be an interesting year.


	12. The Wilberforce Society

Disclaimer: "You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that JK Rowling did not know." —William Wilberforce, probably.

The opening line comes is quoted from _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets._

* * *

 **Introduction**

This story was inspired by several discussions I've read about whether wizards have a moral duty to free all house elves. There's no real canon justification for the enslavement of house elves, so any story that involves them has to gloss over it (as canon does), or find some kind of justification for it (as I have tried to do in my other stories).

From her actions in canon, it's pretty clear Hermione believes that wizards _are_ obligated to free the elves whether the elves want it or not. Yet JK Rowling never took that to its logical conclusion—not with regard to Hermione's actions, but to those of other muggle-borns, who should have been just as indignant about slavery, including the muggle-raised Harry. It would be interesting to see house elves addressed as the moral dilemma they truly are, but of course, that would need a whole story all by itself, and another Hermione-centric story, at that, so here we are.

I actually have a fairly extensive outline for this story if anyone wants to see it, but the short version is that Hermione distances herself from Ron and Harry in second year and teams up with Dean Thomas to create an abolitionist group called the Wilberforce Society. They recruit many muggle-borns and advocate for house elf rights, but they struggle to keep the club afloat through the trials of canon and eventually have to flee to France during the war. (There is an eventual Hermione/Dean pairing, but that's not important to the plot.) Here's the first chapter so you can get an idea of where I'm going with this.

I'm well aware that I'm writing this chapter from the perspective of an American adult in 2019, not a twelve-year-old British kid in 1993, so I'm sure my views are skewed despite my best efforts. If a British author wants to take this up, so much the better.

* * *

 **The Wilberforce Society**

" _It's about the most insulting thing he could think of," gasped Ron, coming back up. "Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born—you know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards—like Malfoy's family—who think they're better than everyone else because they're what people call pure-blood."_

" _Oh,"_ said Hermione in surprise. "So it's a racial slur?"

"Huh?" said Ron. "You mean like a bad name for centaurs or merpeople?"

"No, I mean race as in skin colour," she said. "You should know, Harry. In the muggle-world, there are certain white people who think they're better than everyone else, especially black people."

"But that's stupid! What's skin colour got to do with it?" Ron protested.

"It doesn't, but some muggles believe it just like some wizards believe this—pureblood-muggle-born thing matters. And they call black people…well, names so foul I won't repeat them." She glanced at Harry, who also looked very serious. "You know, in the muggle world, a long time ago, some white people kept black people as slaves."

"What? Seriously?" Ron said.

Harry nodded. "Yeah, it's true."

"That's mental," he said. "Well, I guess muggles don't have house elves, but still—"

"House elves?" Hermione said in confusion.

Harry thought back to his conversation with Dobby on his birthday. "House elves are servants, I guess," he said. "Remember Dobby? He said house-elves are bound to serve one family forever. It was pretty bad, really. He had to punish himself for disobeying them and stuff."

"You didn't tell me that before?" she said.

He shrugged: "I was more worried about getting in trouble with my relatives as the time."

"But house elves are actually _slaves_?" she protested.

"Oh, I wouldn' call 'em slaves," Hagrid rumbled. "Most elves want ter serve wizards."

Hermione turned and narrowed her eyes at Hagrid. "Do they get paid? Are they allowed to leave if they want?"

"Well, no. House elves can only be freed if their masters give 'em clothes."

"They don't even have clothes?" she gasped.

Harry spoke up again: "Dobby was wearing…er…I think it might've been a pillowcase now that I think about it. It just looked like a dirty smock at the time."

"Yeh don' need ter get so worked up, Hermione," Hagrid tried to calm her down. "Dark wizards might treat their elves awful, but just 'bout all house elves don' want ter be freed."

She glared at him. "That's what slaveowners said about muggle slaves two hundred years ago, Hagrid. They deluded themselves so that they could feel better about it."

"Now, it ain't as bad as all that," he insisted. "I mean, take the elves at Hogwarts, fer example—"

" _What?_ There are house elves working at Hogwarts?" Hermione shouted.

"Well, sure. Lots of 'em."

"I've never seen one!"

"Ain't supposed ter be seen, are they? They spend most o' their time in the kitchens anyway, but they come out to clean, tend the fires, and so on. But the point of house elves is so yeh don't know they're there."

Hermione frowned: "You mean they put them out of sight so they don't have to think about them. I can't believe no one's mentioned this before."

"Sorry," Ron shrugged, then paused to belch up another slug. " _Ugh_. It's just not something we think about much."

"And that's exactly your problem," she said.

"Calm down, Hermione," he insisted. "What's the big deal?"

"What's the big deal? Hogwarts is built on slave labour! All the food we eat? Rooms cleaned? Fires lit? All of it, it sounds like."

"Sure," Hagrid said offhandedly. "Point is, the Hogwarts elves? They aren' interested in gettin' paid or nothin'."

"Really?" she said. "How do you know? Has anyone asked them?"

Ron coughed and then spoke up again: "Fred and George have met them. They like to raid the kitchens for snacks. From the sounds of it, they're happy working in the kitchens. Fred says they love their jobs."

"Do they? That's because they're brainwashed! They don't know any better."

"Well, they're not stupid—"

"It's not because they're stupid. It's because they've never been told anything different." She huffed and looked back and forth between her friends. Harry had just been watching the exchange passively, trying to be inconspicuous and sitting far back in the oversize chair. "How can _you_ be so calm about this, Harry?" she asked.

Harry stared at her like a deer in headlamps. "Er—sorry, Hermione," he said. "I just don't know much about the magical world."

"Well, you learnt about slavery in primary school didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Well, then? Why should this be any different? Why didn't you say anything about it to Dobby."

"I told you! I was more worried about him trying to get me expelled!" Harry said indignantly. "I didn't have time to pay attention to what he said about being bound to a family and stuff."

"Hmph. Has anyone done something about it? Has anyone talked about freeing them?"

"What's the point?" Ron said. "If they don't want it—"

"Says _you_ , Ron. If you actually talked to them—"

"Hermione, open your ears," he said more loudly. "They _like_ it. They _like_ being enslaved!"

 _SMACK!_

Ron sputtered and choked as Hermione slapped him so hard he rolled off his stool just as he burped up a couple more slugs.

"Whoa, now!" Hagrid said. "Cut it out!" But she didn't make another move. Both boys stared at her with wide eyes.

"What the— _ack_ —what the hell?" Ron coughed.

Hermione was shaking. She looked so angry she could barely speak. "Don't—you—dare…" she ground out.

"Calm down, now," Hagrid ordered.

"Hermione, take it easy," Harry pleaded.

"I will _not_ take it easy," she snapped. Tears were forming in her eyes. "I can't believe it. I never took you for a racist, Ronald."

"For a what?" he said.

"A racist. A bigot. Like Malfoy."

Ron shot to his feet. "Hey, I'm nothing like Malfoy!"

At the same moment, Harry said. "Whoa! That's going too far!"

Hermione glared at Ron: "From where I'm standing, you are."

"Easy. Don't be so hard on him," Harry tried to calm her.

" _Me_ don't be so hard on him? Why aren't _you_ more angry about this?" But she didn't give him a chance to answer. "I…I…I can't do this!" she stammered. She turned and stomped toward the door.

"Hey, where are you going?" Ron said.

"Away from _you_ prats!" she shouted. "You're every bit as bad as Malfoy, Ronald Weasley. And Harry, I can't believe you're siding with him. Don't talk to me until you pull your heads out of your arses." She left the hut and slammed the door behind her.

Harry and Ron starred after her in shock. There was silence for what felt like several minutes aside from Ron's occasional belching.

"Er…what just happened?" Ron said.

Harry was all but speechless. "I…I think we might've just lost our friend."

"What? Oh, come off it. She just needs to calm down."

"Ron…" Harry said, shaking his head. "I think she might have actually meant it. I think she really doesn't want anything to do with us until we, er, come around."

"No way. She's not gonna stop being our friend over a bunch of house elves," he insisted.

"I think she might," Harry insisted. "Muggles do get really hung up about slavery. The Americans fought a big war over it…I guess my relatives kinda treated me like their slave, and you know how awful they are. I just don't like to think about it. I don't think she's going to back down."

Ron looked out the window at Hermione's fast-retreating form across the grounds, utterly bewildered. "I can't believe she's making that big a deal out of it," he muttered. Hagrid looked equally confused. Harry was just trying to figure out how he'd got caught in the middle of this.

* * *

Hermione's anger cooled somewhat as she walked back up to the castle. Now, she was mostly wondering how this day had gone so wrong. Malfoy insulting her was all but forgotten by now. Had she been too hard on Harry and Ron? She honestly didn't know. What _was_ the appropriate response to this. _No one would ever be friends with a Nazi_ , her mind supplied. Well, fine, she was free to hate Malfoy in peace, then. But a twelve-year-old boy who _wasn_ _'t_ a hateful person, nor were his family, and just didn't know any better? She wasn't sure. It was just that he was so closed-minded about it. And Harry was a complicated puzzle that would take her a lot longer to figure out.

Looking back, arguably the one who surprised her most was Hagrid. He might not be the brightest bulb in the box, but he was still a responsible adult who, in her opinion, ought to know better—doubly so, as she suspected he wasn't fully human himself. Harry and Ron were perhaps defensible, but she just _couldn_ _'t_ respect Hagrid the same way after hearing him say those things.

Some of the students were already going to lunch when she reached the castle, but made a beeline for the library instead. She'd never even heard of house elves before Harry mentioned Dobby, and she clearly needed to do more research.

What she found was as disappointing as it was infuriating. There was precious little material dedicated to house elves directly. There certainly wasn't anything in _Hogwarts, A History_. It seems most wizards thought the elves were better "out of sight, out of mind." What material there was told her that elf enslavement went back centuries, and yes, it really was chattel slavery. There was no way around it. They were bought and sold and born into their condition; they couldn't own normal clothing; they were magically compelled to follow orders, and to her horror, they could legally be put down with no more regard than the family dog. There were laws against abusing them, but if Dobby was any indication, they were poorly enforced.

None of the books she looked through gave any serious justification for house elf enslavement. One talked about them having some kind of "magical symbiosis," but it wasn't clear what that meant, and none of the other sources corroborated it. Most didn't even see the moral question, which only put the wizarding world about two hundred and fifty years behind the times. There was no William Wilberforce in the magical world advocating for abolition.

Before she knew it, it was dinner time. She hadn't even thought of going to lunch, and she was so engrossed in research that she lost track of time until her stomach started growling. She wasn't done either, but she'd have to continue tomorrow. She walked down to the Great Hall and, after a moment's consideration, sat diagonally across from Harry and Ron, not as close as usual.

Ron noticed. "So you're really not talking to us, now?" he said.

Hermione ignored him. She tried to make small talk with Lavender and Parvati. When the food appeared on the table, however, she looked down at it and couldn't touch it—not out of a sense of moral conviction. She actually didn't think she could stomach it. Of course, that didn't take long for her friends to notice, either.

"Hey, are you okay, Hermione?" Parvati said.

"I'm fine, Parvati. I'm just not hungry," she replied.

"Oi, are you not eating now, too?" Ron piped up.

"I'm just not hungry, Ronald," she sniffed.

"But you missed lunch," he said. "Come on, Hermione. Roast beef. Yorkshire pudding." He tried to waft the smell toward her.

She glared at him. "Slave labour," she huffed. "That's what made this dinner. _Slave labour._ "

Several students around her paused in their eating and looked at her, both muggle-borns and some magical-raised students who looked confused.

"Come again?" said Dean Thomas.

"She's talking about house elves," Ron said dismissively. "She doesn't like them being enslaved."

" _Ohh,"_ her pureblood friends said and went back to their food.

"Excuse me, that's kind of a big deal," she told them. "House elf enslavement goes back centuries. They're bound to some family—or Hogwarts—with no pay or—"

"Hermione, we already all know all this," Lavender Brown.

" _I_ didn't. I never would have expected—It's illegal in the muggle world, you know, and I mean _really_ illegal."

"So? We're not in the muggle world."

"Augh! Why doesn't anyone get it? Dean, Colin, you're muggle-born," she said. "Don't you have a problem with slavery going on at Hogwarts?"

"Well, _yeah_ ," Dean Thomas said. He briefly held up his hands, palms toward him, emphasising his skin colour. "I'd just never heard about it before."

Colin Creevey, slower on the uptake, added, "Er, yeah, I guess that's pretty bad."

"See?" she said.

There wasn't outright prejudice against muggle-borns in Gryffindor like there was in Slytherin, but her attitude was still inducing eye-rolling here. And Harry still looked like he didn't want to be here right now and was trying to sink into his seat.

"C'mon, Hermione," Ron said. "Starving yourself isn't going to free the elves," Ron insisted. "They don't even want it anyway."

Dean silently turned and stared at him, though he looked more incredulous than angry. Ron just shrugged it off and kept eating.

Hermione pushed herself away from the table. "It doesn't matter if it'll help or not," she said. "I think I've quite lost my appetite." And she stood up and walked out of the Great Hall, leaving her surprised housemates behind her.

She wasn't sure what to do. She wandered the corridors for a while, even after the rest of the school came back from dinner and went up to their dorms. She finally decided to run up to the Owlery. She had just enough time to send a letter before curfew so she hurried up and dashed off a note to her parents. Her handwriting grew a little sloppy and frantic toward the end, but she sent it off before she could second-guess herself:

 _Dear Mum and Dad,_

 _I really need some advice about something. You see, there are some more unsavoury aspects to the magical world that Professor McGonagall didn_ _'t tell us when she first visited. In fact, I only found out about it today. It turns out the magical world still practises_ _slavery!_ _Hogwarts has a hundred slaves working for it to do the cooking and cleaning. I thought it was all done by magic until now._

 _I should have said it_ _'s not slavery of humans. There are these creatures called "house elves." They're about three feet tall and have big ears and eyes—kind of like the Shoemaker's Elves. But they're sentient beings all the same. They have rights! I checked in the library, and they really are slaves. They're considered property and bought and sold and everything, and no one seems to care about it! It goes back centuries!_

 _Even my friends don_ _'t get it. Ron actually said house elves_ _like_ _to be enslaved. I couldn_ _'t believe what I was hearing! —I kind of slapped him. It sounded like the vile stuff that Malfoy boy says, though! And Harry was standing by him even though he grew up in the muggle world too!_

 _I don_ _'t know what to do. I really,_ _really_ _don_ _'t want to keep colluding in the oppression of a hundred slaves, and I don't know if I can be friends with someone as racist as Ron. Except I get the feeling most other wizards are just as bad, and I think I'd rather not know. I want to do something about it, but I don't know what. Do you have any ideas?_

 _Love from,_

 _Hermione_

* * *

The next morning, Hermione's hunger finally asserted itself over her distaste for the situation, and she served herself a full breakfast. Since she couldn't leave the school grounds, she couldn't do anything about that. Dean Thomas was already there when she arrived. He nodded to her in greeting as he'd already filled his own plate. She could guess that he'd come to the same conclusion.

Harry and Ron arrived a minute later. "Oh, so you're eating again, now?" Ron said when he saw her.

She looked up and glared at him.

"Ron, take it easy," Harry said.

"What? She's the one who's gone nutters over house elves."

"Yeah…" he said, very uncomfortably, "but she's right about one thing. A lot muggles would be really offended to hear the way you talk about elves."

"You might even get beat up if you said it to the wrong person," Hermione sniffed.

Dean spoke up: "I can think of a few people I know who'd slap you upside the head, at least." Ron looked more uncomfortable now.

"And anyway, it's not like I have much choice about the food," she continued. "There aren't any other options here. But don't think I've given up. I'm just trying to figure out what I can properly _do_ about it."

"You worry too much, Hermione," Ron said. "Have you even _talked_ to the elves?"

"No, of course not. Students aren't supposed to go down into the kitchens."

"We have," Fred spoke up from down the table.

"We can show you around if you want," George agreed.

"The elves are really nice. They love it down there," Fred continued.

"Well, they might take issue if you start telling them to take pay," George cautioned.

"Hmph. I'm sure they'd _say_ that," Hermione said, "but that's because they're brainwashed and uneducated, if they're anything like muggle slaves used to be."

Several of her pureblooded housemates were confused about her talk of "muggle slaves," and started to ask, but they were interrupted by the arrival of the mail. To her surprise, a school owl landed next to Hermione and stuck out its leg with a letter. Her parents must have been quicker getting back to her than she'd thought. She thanked the owl and took the letter and read it:

 _Dear Hermione,_

 _We were very troubled to read your letter last night. It_ _'s shocking to think that any society in the world still practises legalised slavery today, let alone one that's right here in Britain. We of course wanted to try to corroborate your story, but we don't have any wizarding books here to look it up in. We're going to see if we can get into that bookstore in Diagon Alley on our own on Saturday to try to find some better references._

 _We_ _'re sorry to hear you've found so little support from your friends on this. You probably shouldn't be too hard on Ron. It sounds like he was raised that way, and as worrying as that is, he isn't too old to change. It sounds like he's just never made to connection to how awful slavery is._

 _Harry is a bit more troubling, but from what you_ _'ve told us about him, it sounds like he didn't get the best upbringing from his aunt and uncle. We don't want to pass judgement without knowing more, and you probably shouldn't either. Can you tell us more about his situation? (Without invading his privacy, of course.)_

 _As for what you should do, we can understand if this makes you want to withdraw from the magical world, but you shouldn_ _'t let it ruin all of it for you, or stop you from making friends at Hogwarts. We agree that colluding with it is a serious moral dilemma, but you should remember that for one, magical education is compulsory, and for another, you'll probably have a better chance of making a change from within the system. That's how it worked in most places in the muggle world._

 _If you really want to do something now, perhaps you could start a club. Other muggle-born students might be interested to know about house elves. You could do more research on it and maybe talk to some elves if you can. Then you would have a better idea of what you could do to advance the cause._

 _Good luck, whatever you decide._

 _Love from,_

 _Mum and Dad_

* * *

Her parents' letter was what gave her the idea. She mulled it over, did a bit more reading in the library, and jotted down some ideas. Then, she approached Dean that afternoon.

"Hi, Dean. Can we talk?" she said.

"Sure, Hermione. What's up?"

She motioned for him to follow her to an empty classroom. It would be better if they weren't interrupted by their less than helpful housemates.

"I wrote my parents for advice about the house elf, er, issue," she told him.

"Oh? What did they say?" he asked her.

"Okay, you know that house elves have been enslaved in the wizarding world for centuries, and no one's done anything about it?"

"Yeah. Harry told me all about Dobby last night."

"Oh, good. So I was thinking, what do you think about starting a club to advocate for freeing house elves?"

"Huh…You mean like an abolitionist movement?" Dean said. "That could be good, I guess. It does sound like something that's needed, if this stuff's as bad as Harry said."

"I think it is, from what I've read."

"Then sure, it's worth a shot. I dunno if we'll get many members besides muggle-borns, but there's a few more of us around, I guess."

"I think we need to try," Hermione said. "I need to do _something_ , and my parents said starting a club was probably the best thing I could do right now…We can call it the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare."

Dean's eyes narrowed, and he thought for a moment. Then he said, "That spells 'spew.'"

"But it's S-P-E-W," Hermione countered.

"It _spells_ 'spew,' Hermione. I'm not joining a club that's named 'spew.'"

"But S-P-E-W has been used before," she said. "What about the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women?"

"Hm…okay, that's fair, but that still doesn't make it a good name. Did you have any other ideas?"

"Well…I was considering Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal Status, but I didn't think that would fit on a button."

Dean stared at her with an incredulous look, and she snapped her mouth shut and looked down at her feet. He shook his head. "Okay, I'm officially in charge of naming stuff," he said.

"Sorry," she muttered.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "The club's a good idea, and it sounds like you've been doing good research for it. Let's go with the Anti-Slavery Society for now, 'cause that's, like, the historical version."

"Okay. I can show you what I've found so far." She grabbed his wrist and started pulling him along in the direction of the library. "I'm thinking our short-term aims should be securing house elves fair wages and working conditions—"

"Hermione," Dean pulled away and held up a finger. "I think I actually agree with Ron on this one. Step one: have you actually _talked_ to the house elves?"

"No…" she admitted. "Does it matter?"

" _Yes._ You can't just start campaigning for civil rights without talking to the people you're campaigning for. It's…I dunno, it's bad form or something. I think need to write my mum and stepdad before we do anything. They know more about civil rights stuff than I do."

"Oh. Okay," Hermione said. "Thanks, Dean. I really appreciate the help. Harry and Ron haven't been very helpful."

Dean shrugged: "It's like you said. We need to try. Ending slavery should be everybody's business in this day and age. I'm still trying to wrap me head around it, though. I'll let you know when I hear back from mum, yeah."

"Sure," she agreed. "And I'll see if I can get Harry and Colin on board in the meantime."

* * *

A/N: Since the title drop doesn't happen in this chapter, I'll note here that Dean decides to change the name of the club to the Wilberforce Society after they talk to the kitchen elves and determine that the Anti-Slavery Society is too in-your-face for both wizards and elves alike.


	13. Salem: Portus 1-1

Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ belongs to JK Rowling, and _Worm_ belongs to Wildbow, but other than that, the Arithmancer Series belongs to me!

 **Introduction**

Okay, I've been sitting on this for a while. This is the first chapter of a crossover—or rather a recursive crossover—between the Arithmancer-Verse and Worm, which I started writing off and on about two years ago. For those of you who don't know, _Worm_ (sometimes known as _Parahumans_ ) is an _epic_ web serial written by John C. McCrae aka Wildbow. Basically, it's a superhero story that reconstructs all the comic book tropes in a realistic setting. It's very dark, but it's amazingly well-written, and I highly recommend it.

This story is a crossover in which Arithmancer!Hermione is dropped into Brockton Bay in the Worm-Verse by an interdimensional Portkey accident in the summer of 2010. Superpowered hijinks ensue with all your favourite characters.

The main thing you should know about this story is that **I might actually write this one.** That's _far_ from guaranteed, but, well, I started writing it because I've seen so few really good Worm/Harry Potter crossovers, and I thought this idea would mesh well. I have about 30,000 words of this written, and I would be interested in continuing it (although **co-authoring is still on the table** ). But at the same time, I get the feeling that a lot of my readers are tired of the Arithmancer-Verse and would rather move on, which is perfectly understandable.

So instead of just tossing this out there and leaving it, I decided to post the first chapter or two here to gauge the reaction. If the reaction is good, I'll consider putting up the full version. I want to assure you that even if I do, **I am still committed to weekly (I hope) updates on** _ **Animagus at War.**_ And I make no promises for "completing" _Salem_ beyond an arc-by-arc basis, but it would be fun to try.

Just some minor bookkeeping notes: this story is "canon"-compliant to the Arithmancer Series up through Chapter 18 of _Annals of Arithmancy_. It's canon for _Worm_ up to about a year before the story start. I did make one small change, though: canon for _Worm_ is that popular Internet sites like Google and Facebook exist in Earth Bet. However, the butterflies of the Worm-Verse (including Mark Zuckerberg never being born) are such that this would not be the case, and I have reflected that here.

* * *

 **Salem: Portus 1.1**

 _June 2010_

Hermione Granger landed in a heap with a scream, her tools clattering around her.

"What the hell?" she said to herself.

This was _not_ supposed to happen. The runes weren't even completed yet. She couldn't guess how they'd been activated. Now, she'd have to get back to Seneca Lake to figure out what happened. She grabbed her wand and her handbag and staggered to her feet, then registered where she had landed: a giant, red 'H' marked on concrete.

"A helipad?" she said.

" _Freeze!"_

Her head snapped up. Two men in SWAT gear had guns trained on her. She raised her wand on instinct. Behind them, she saw a city skyline, she was on a roof.

" _Drop your weapon!"_

The shout came from behind her. She spun around to see two more men in SWAT gear and an even more surprising sight: the ocean.

"This isn't Springfield. Where am I?" she said.

"I said, drop your weapon!" the lead cop shouted.

Hermione's mind raced. To a muggle, a wand would look more like a drumstick than anything else. For the police to recognise it for a weapon, they would have to know about magic. But then, they should know her. She was famous in the magical world.

Not pointing directly at any of them, she said, "Who are you with? If you know what this is, you should know who I am."

"Drop your weapon _now_ , or we _will_ shoot!" They started advancing.

She only had a split second to think. She didn't know where she was, and talking wasn't working. She hadn't even fully processed her situation when she Apparated away the only place she could: ten thousand feet straight up.

Her ears popped painfully, and the air rushed around her as she began to fall. She couldn't afford to take too long. She was falling right back towards that SWAT team, whoever they were. She twisted in the air and spotted an identifiable hill at the outskirts of the city. She Apparated in midair about a thousand feet above it, then magically slowed her descent in a practised move so that her impact when she hit the ground was jarring, but not crippling or worse.

Hermione pushed herself to her feet again and looked around. A muggle couple, not far away, were staring and already reaching for their phones. No one else around.

" _Confundus!"_ she cast. "I was here the whole time."

The young couple blinked a few times, looked down at their phones, confused, and then put them away. _Phew_ , that was a second crisis averted. Her clothes wouldn't look _too_ out of place, so she should be fine there. Hermione looked around and took stock, taking a deep breath. She was still in North America, by the policeman's accent. Probably still in New England from the weather (balmy for June) and time of day (late afternoon). She was in a coastal city, fairly large, but not New York or Boston—eastward-facing from the position of the Sun. Nothing rang a bell.

She thought back to her encounter on the rooftop and finally understood what she had thought odd about the police officers (well, aside from everything). On their uniforms, where they should have said _POLICE_ or _SWAT_ , they read _PRT ENE_. Some kind of military police unit, she wondered? That might explain how they knew to take her wand for a weapon. Either way, something was definitely up there. And she'd left a bunch of her notes and tools back on that rooftop, hadn't she? She needed to inform MACUSA to Obliviate them if they needed to. If she knew how to find them.

Right now, Hermione was in some kind of park or lookout point. She was lucky there was only one muggle couple there. She couldn't Apparate without knowing where she was, so she'd have to go the muggle route. She took a stab in the dark.

"Excuse me," she called to the muggles. "I've got all turned around here. Can you tell me how to get back to the bus station?"

To her relief, they didn't look confused and probably just took her for a tourist. "Sure," the man said. "Back down that trail, and left at the fork. It's right next to the park shelter. Hey, you'll want to go now to get back to where you're staying before dark. This is a rough city at night."

"Er, right. I will. Thank you," she said.

She started off down the trail. She checked her phone as she walked. No signal. Figured. She found the bus stop in a few minutes, and from looking at the bus schedule, she managed to work out that she was in a place called Brockton Bay, but she couldn't find the state. She had no idea where that was. She didn't remember any city with that name big enough to be this one. Maybe it was the name of a suburb or neighbourhood?

She had some privacy, now, so she could at least check her map. She reached into her handbag and pulled out the Geomancer's Map. That certainly wouldn't fail her. It was some of her best work: an entire printed world atlas squeezed down into a single piece of parchment with charms to calculate the global ley line network with mathematical precision.

She opened up the Map and activated it. The world map appeared, but there were no ley lines.

"Um…"

She checked the runes. They seemed to be working. She pulled up the code layer. Yes, they were working, but it wasn't picking up the ley lines.

"But that's impossible!" she gasped. The Map was tied into the global ley line network. Even in the remotest part of Antarctica, it should pick up its location relative to the ley lines. The only way it couldn't connect was…

"Unplottable city?" she said to herself. No, even in Unplottable areas, it would pick up the local lines unless the area wasn't tied into the global network, which would make it closed to Portkeys as well. She wouldn't have been able to get in.

" _Fideliused_ city?" The power requirements would be astronomical, but it was theoretically possible. But that had the same problem: how had she got here at all?

A handful of wild theories, each more improbable than the last, flitted through her mind. She still didn't know where she was, and without knowing that, she couldn't find her way back to MACUSA. George must be worried by now. They'd be looking, certainly. It was possible to come out in the wrong place with a Portkey, but you had to come out _somewhere_ (albeit not necessarily in one piece). But would they think to trace the path all the way to the ocean? If she'd even managed to stay on the ley line, which seemed unlikely. No, she couldn't rely on them.

Well, the bus would be there in a few minutes. For now, secrecy was more important than speed. She could wait.

When the bus arrived, she checked the price and counted out the two dollars and ten cents fare.

"Hey!" the driver stopped her. "Exact change only."

Hermione looked up at him. "This _is_ exact change," she said.

"No, it ain't."

She held it out on her palm so he could see: "It's two dollars and ten cents."

The driver leaned forward and squinted. "Greenbacks?" he said. "It's the twenty-first century, in case you haven't noticed."

 _What?_ "What are you talking about?" she asked.

"What, you didn't look up American money before you came here?" he growled, noticing her accent. "We use dollar _coins_ here."

"Huh? Since when?"

"Uh, the past ten years," he said in a stupid tone.

 _What the bloody hell?_ "Did I fall through a wormhole or something?"

"Look, your Highness, if you don't have the change—" he said impatiently.

"Hold on, what about quarters? Do you take quarters?" she snapped at his disrespect.

"What, are you stupid or something?"

Hermione was so frustrated that she seriously considered transfiguring the exact change, but she restrained herself. A dollar and eighty-three cents American. That was all she had in change. She was so close, but it didn't matter anyway. She had bigger problems. "Never mind," she said, and she stepped off the bus.

Something was _very_ wrong here. First the unfamiliar location, then no detectable ley lines, and now dollar coins? A sick feeling was beginning to build up in the pit of her stomach. What if she really _had_ fallen through a wormhole?

It was time to give up on muggle means. It was getting late, and she had no muggle transportation. She pulled out her _Firebolt Classic_ from her magical handbag. She didn't much care for it, but it was faster and easier to handle at high speeds than her flying robe. She Disillusioned herself and took to the air. She really had no idea where she was going. All she knew was that she needed to find a public library to get to a computer and actually find out what was going on.

It took a couple of disillusioned stops at bus stops to find a map that showed a library, but she made it there eventually. Brockton Bay didn't look like a very nice place, on the whole. Some parts were well-maintained, but just a few blocks over were run-down neighbourhoods covered in graffiti, including a higher than average number of swastikas. She touched down in an alley near the library and cancelled the Disillusionment Charm before going in. The library itself was fairly nice—an old, classical building that looked more than a little like an art museum, but she didn't stop to admire the artwork and instead went straight to the computers.

That was where things got even weirder.

Hermione wasn't as tech-savvy as the average muggle her age, but she knew her way around a computer. She didn't recognise the OS. That was a bad sign. The System button told her it was something called Microsoft Mosaic V. She didn't see any web browser she recognised. After clicking around a bit, she found a program called Compass Rose that turned out to be a browser. The default search engine was MSN, even though she thought that was supposed to be Bing now. She typed in "google" out of habit.

The top result was: _Did you mean: googol?_

No. She tried again: "www dot google dot com."

That turned out to be a porn site.

"Bloody hell!" She clicked away fast and tried searching for "search."

At least _that_ did what she wanted, but the names were all different from what she knew.

"The Oracle…Sherlock…Oracle Image Search…Ask…WebRunner…" The Oracle came up more than the others, so she guessed that was the biggest search engine. It would do. She searched for Brockton Bay.

A map came up, and several news stories. Brockton Bay was in New Hampshire. She was a hundred miles off course, and the coastline didn't look right. Hermione surreptitiously reached in her handbag for her paper map of the United States. Most muggles probably wouldn't bother with one these days, but for a witch, paper maps were important, even with her magical map on hand.

No, that coastline _definitely_ wasn't right. A great divot was carved out of _this_ world's New Hampshire such that Portsmouth would be underwater here. This was _definitely_ not her world. Wormhole or something else, she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Her hands were shaking. Tears began to well in her eyes. How had she got here? Could she figure out how to get home? What was George thinking right now? And God, the kids! As far as they knew, she would have just disappeared when the stone circle activated—which it shouldn't have been able to. They were probably worried sick already, and she had no idea how to reach them—

 _Stop it! Occlumency!_ she chastised herself. She couldn't afford to break down now. Her best chance of getting home was to think rationally and understand as much as she could. She clamped down on her emotions and tried to focus on the problem at hand.

She was still on the verge of hyperventilating, and she could tell she was starting to attract attention. She darted to the toilets so she could catch her breath without letting anything slip to the muggles. Leaning on the counter for support, she fumbled with the sink with still-trembling hands and splashed some cold water on her face. "I can do this," she whispered to herself. "I've got out of worse scrapes than this. I'm Hermione Jean Granger—I'm _Lady Archimedes_ , and if anyone can figure out interdimensional travel—" She stopped when she heard how arrogant that sounded when she said it out loud. She glanced in the mirror. The water on her face made her look more tear-stricken than she was. She quickly dried it. "You can cry after you understand where you are," she told her reflection, and she almost believed it.

Hermione drew a deep breath and took stock. She had a few options she could try to send a message, even if they were long shots. She called for Dobby, but he didn't come. She tried her communication mirror, but George, Emmy, and Robin didn't appear. She checked that she was alone, and she collected herself and concentrated… _"Expecto Nuntium."_ All those years of practice killing dementors paid off, and her Messenger Patronus appeared before her, but the silvery otter simply shook its head when she tried to send it to her family. It couldn't find them across dimensions—at least that was what she told herself. She didn't want to think about the alternative. She kept it active anyway, basking in its soothing light.

A few minutes of Patronus exposure cleared her head enough to go back out into the library and figure out what kind of world she'd landed in. She started by looking up the dollar bill thing just so she wouldn't be caught be surprise. Apparently, they stopped printing them in 1999. With dismay, she realised her larger bills would be no good either. The designs were different, and the signatures would be wrong. It explained why her mobile phone had no signal, too. The networks and encoding were different. Her mobile carrier might not even exist in this world. She had no money, no communications, and no valid ID. Great. But hey, she'd been a fugitive hiding out in the woods once. This wouldn't stop her.

Forgetting her immediate circumstances, she began Googling— _searching_ —major historical events. Was everything different in this world or just recent times? World War II? Same. Moon landing? Same. Berlin wall? Different. Several years _later_ , in fact. Hmm…Margaret Thatcher? Elected at the same time, voted out several years earlier than in her world. This world's history apparently diverged sometime in the early 1980s. Except that Brockton Bay and its geography were completely different. That didn't add up at all.

Finally, she looked up that odd lettering on the police uniforms: _PRT ENE_. They had a website. PRT, it seemed, stood for "Parahuman Response Team." _Parahuman?_ Parahuman meant…

"Oh, _bugger_ me!"

Superheroes. Supervillains.

She was in a comic book.


	14. Salem: Portus 1-2

Disclaimer: Wild Bob owns Worm, and you probably know the rest by now.

A/N: Okay, the response to the first chapter of _Salem_ was extremely positive. I appreciate the show of support, but I hope you'll bear with me for a little longer because **I actually do want to hear opposing views**. I'm not trying to get you to talk me out of it or anything. It's just that I really have had reviews criticise me for overusing Hermione in the past, and for making Hermione OP, and I'm trying to get a balanced view.

I'm sympathetic to these criticisms because Arithmancer!Hermione _is_ pretty OP and has seen a lot more use that I expected when I started writing fanfic. I've tried not to make her a Mary Sue, but I can definitely see the parallels. Still, given the support I saw yesterday, I'm leaning toward officially writing this one.

Also, to those of you who said you haven't read _Worm_ , there WILL be spoilers here, so go read _Worm!_ At least read through Arc 3 to see if you like it. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

* * *

 **Portus 1.2**

Superheroes and supervillains. Parahumans.

What. The. Hell.

Maybe she was dead, and this was some kind of bizarre Purgatory, Hermione thought. It was theoretically possible that the stone circle had Vanished her—transported her with no destination set and erased her from the universe. Actually, no, that _wasn_ _'t_ possible, but it wasn't supposed to be possible for the damn thing to activate in the first place, so who was she to say?

She wondered again what George was thinking. If only she could get a message through to him…Would they even be able to figure out _what_ had happened at home? Would they jump to the Vanishing theory or something else?

She logged out of the computer in disgust, or maybe futility. She must have stumbled out the doors of the library after that, but she gave no real thought to where she was going. Where _could_ she go? She had no valid ID and no valid money. She didn't exist. She was trapped in a parallel universe where the laws of physics—or at least of magic—that could be where superpowers came from, after all—were totally different.

Or were they? She hadn't taken the time to see if the "parahumans" here were the same as witches and wizards, except out from under the Statute of Secrecy. She should have looked closer, but she didn't feel like going back in there. She needed—she needed a lot of things. She needed money. She needed sleep. She needed a place to sleep. She needed _some_ clothes. She had a lot in her handbag, but they probably wouldn't be in fashion in the muggle world—if she could call it that. She needed information most of all, but before that, she needed a clear head.

"Hey, lady!" someone called.

She looked up. Without thinking, she'd wandered into an alley at some point and had slumped against the wall just inside the entrance.

"You know it's dangerous to be out here alone at night." A trio of tough-looking young men were approaching her on the street. At first sight, they looked suspiciously like gangsters—muscular and dressed in red and black with shaved heads and half-covered tattoos on their arms. One of them had an unusually long blond beard, at least by muggle standards.

"Hey, you okay?" the bearded man said. "Did someone hurt you?"

"What?" Hermione said, trying to get her brain back in gear. "No, I—I'm just having a bad day."

"Oh, you're English?" the apparent leader said. "Are you new in town? Someone should've told you not to wander around at night. Brockton Bay's a dangerous city."

She sighed: "I can take care of myself, thanks."

"Not if a villain comes calling," he said. "You're safe in this part of town, but if you don't know where you're going, you could cross the wrong street, and suddenly, you're surrounded by Asians."

Hermione snapped to attention. "Excuse me?" she said. Then she looked again at the shaved heads, the tattoos, and the matching red and black colours, and her suspicions were raised further. "You three aren't just concerned citizens, are you?" she said slowly.

Two of the gangsters crossed their arms menacingly, and the leader pulled up his sleeve to reveal a swastika tattooed on his arm with an Iron Cross below it and what looked like some kind of stylised SS symbol above it. "We don't have any quarrel with you, ma'am," he said, "especially seeing as you're not local, but you won't want to go starting any trouble, either."

Whatever the skinheads were expecting, Hermione's reaction probably surprised them. She turned _away_ from them, slumped against the wall and groaned in exasperation, her hand over her eyes. "Oh, for God's sake," she muttered to herself. "As if this day weren't bad enough. Actual Nazis, now?"

"Hey, now!" the third skinhead said. "Better we found you than those yellow bastards. Good looking chick like you? You might not be too old, they'd throw you in a sex den at gunpoint. Or the Merchants—they'd string you out on crack so you did it to yourself."

Hermione turned back, standing up straight and glaring at them. Maybe those things were even true, but still. "You'll forgive me if I don't take the word of the men with swastikas on their arms—Look, I'm not in the mood for this. I've had just a bloody _awful_ day, and I've got enough problems already, so how about we just go our separate ways, and no one needs to start any trouble?"

The trio didn't move. The bearded leader told her, "You'd best watch your attitude here. The Empire remembers insults from _everyone_."

"Again, coming from the man with the swastikas," she said. "Most people don't care for Nazis, you know. I can't imagine your 'Empire' has many friends to start with, and I'm definitely not one of them, so stand aside, please."

She started to walk around them, the the bearded man reached out and grabbed her shoulder, holding her in place. She stopped in her tracks and looked him in the eyes with a glare she reserved for Death Eaters and dementors, but she spoke calmly—a habit borne out of years of practice: "Remove your hand, or I'll remove it for you." She discretely reached for her wand.

"I don't think so, lady," he said. "You may be white, but even if you don't like us, you'd better _respect_ us. Think she needs an attitude adjustment, boys?" he asked his friends.

"She talks back to us like _that?_ Definitely."

The bearded man shifted his hand, grabbing Hermione by her hair and the back of her neck—

And she whipped out her wand, and with a red flash, he dropped to the ground like a stone.

"Shit, cape! Run!" The remaining skinheads bolted, leaving their friend behind. She let them go. Technically, she ought to follow them and Obliviate them. If there _were_ witches and wizards in the world, there was no need to annoy them more than necessary. But, honestly, this was a comic book world. It wasn't like anyone would notice.

 _Cape?_ she thought. Superhero, she assumed. The skinheads seemed to think she was an incognito super, which suited her fine, though she did Obliviate the one at her feet on general principle.

It was reckless. She shouldn't have taunted gangsters like that. But if she were honest with herself, she'd been looking for trouble from the moment she saw the swastikas. After the day she'd had, her temper was short. Still, the brief attack had cleared her head, and she realised she needed a game plan. She began considering her options, and after a few minutes' thought, she decided on a short term course of action.

First off, she had no money, but she _did_ have diamonds, and a city this size ought to have pawn shops. That would give her enough to find a place to sleep, food, and generally some time to herself to get her act together.

The other problem was finding the magical community—if there _was_ a magical community in this world. But that wouldn't be too hard either for someone with a passing knowledge of geomancy. First step: determine whether there was any ambient magic. That wasn't quite as simple as waving a wand, but it wasn't too difficult to tease out patterns of ambient magic on the scale of, say, a house—or an alley. She walked up and down the alley several times, muttering a geomantic spell as she went, then did it one more time, just to be sure. Yes, there was _definitely_ ambient magic in the air. She sighed with relief. There was magic in this world. That meant she at least had some resources to work with and could hopefully find help. She just needed to get in contact with the other wizards of this world.

Tomorrow, though. Right now, she needed a place to sleep. Hermione walked back into the library, mostly calm again. She looked up pawn shops near downtown as well as motels on the computer and wrote down the information for three of each. She also looked up the local gangs. She figured she ought to know whom she had just made an enemy. Empire Eighty-Eight were the local neo-Nazis and controlled a lot of the city. They were led by someone called Kaiser and had…more supervillains than she cared to look up right now. But the public pictures of with their gang activities didn't look like anything witches and wizards would do, so she was probably right that they were different.

In any case, she was ready to go. She just needed to get to a pawn shop and then a motel, and she'd be set for the night. Unfortunately, her luck didn't hold. A minute after she left the library, three figures stepped out of the shadows, and a familiar voice said, "That's her, Cricket!" She turned and saw the two skinheads were back, and this time, there was a woman in a costume with them.

The woman—"Cricket," apparently—looked younger than Hermione and quite a bit shorter. Probably older than the skinheads, though. She had a red and black outfit, blond hair in a buzz cut and what might have been some kind of sports mask obscuring her face. She didn't speak, but just pointed a weapon that looked like a miniature scythe at Hermione.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me," Hermione groaned as she drew her wand. "Look, I didn't hurt your…friend," she said. "I just knocked him out. And he attacked me first. Can we just call it even?"

Cricket ran at Hermione, her mini-scythes flashing. Hermione fired a Stunner, but the woman somersaulted over it and kept coming. At that moment, she felt a vibration of some kind. Her vision went blurry, and her equilibrium was thrown off. She staggered, giving the woman—the _villain?_ —time to close the distance. Cricket nearly struck her before Hermione lashed out with a silent Banishing Charm at point-blank range—too close to dodge. She was thrown head over heels with a strangled yell, but she rolled and was back on her feet in less than a second.

The disorienting feeling stopped for a moment while she was rolling. Infrasound? Hermione tried to send a Silencing Charm, but Cricket dodged, leaping around her to come at her from the side. Hermione barely got a Shield Charm up in time, and she bounced off.

 _Silencio!_ she thought hard, then caught herself and tried _Muffliato!_ Cricket dodged the Silencing Charm, but sure enough, the attack was infrasound, and the area-effect charm blocked it. The woman's eyes widened behind her mask at seeing Hermione shrug off the noise. She tried to leap over Hermione's head, but another Banisher caught her arm when she tried to strike again, the scythe narrowly missing Hermione's throat. Cricket stuck the landing, not even having to roll.

 _Immobulus!_ She dodged again. Damn, she was fast. Hermione fired a Stunner at the ground to get her to leap over it and then tried to hit her in the air, but she twisted in midair and slipped past the next spell.

 _Protego!_

Cricket hit Hermione's shield again, but she stayed on her feet this time, slashing at it, sparks flying where the steel struck. She was learning fast, and magic wasn't as useful in such close quarters. Reluctantly, Hermione played her remaining card—the one she'd rather keep hidden: she drew her second wand. Cricket eyes widened again, and she backflipped away, but with two wands Hermione had the advantage. Cricket's backflip gave her just enough time to get off a Sticking Charm at the ground on her landing position.

Cricket saw _that_ too, though Hermione couldn't see how, and twisted in the air like a cat, coming down with the heads of her scythes on the ground to push herself off that spot. But she apparently didn't expect them to stick to the ground, and her resultant handstand-stumble gave Hermione just enough time to drop her with a Stunner.

"Fuck! Run!" one of the skinheads yelled. She looked up at them, as they dashed away from her. Hermione sighed. She pointed her wand down at Cricket and muttered, "Obliviate," wiping her memory of the last twenty minutes, and cancelled the Sticking Charm. Then she looked back to the escaping skinheads and Apparated in front of them.

"Shit!" they yelled. One of them was close enough that she got him with a Stunner. The other pulled a gun.

 _Protego!_

 _BANG!_

 _Expelliarmus!_

The smoking gun was flung from his hand, and another Stunner got him before he could react. After a moment's consideration, she Obliviated the skinheads, too. Presumably, the cops would respond to the gunshot soon and find four unconscious Nazis in the street. Better if they couldn't identify her when they woke up.

With that sorted, Hermione took a chance and walked to a pawn shop rather than flying. This city didn't seem to be very safe after dark, but she preferred walking around normally to sneaking around Disillusioned, in the air or on the ground, especially since it made it easier to stop and ask for directions. The first pawn shop she went to took a synthetic diamond ring for two thousand dollars cash. The clerk was suspicious and asked for an ID, which gave her pause, but to her relief, he accepted her English driver's license without question. She asked for some of it in small bills and change for a bus fare, which got her to a seedy-looking motel. Almost everything was seedy-looking, really. Maybe it was just this city, but something felt…off about this world.

But she didn't pay it much mind. Once she was alone in the hotel room, she finally let herself down. Today had been a horrible, overwhelming day. She was trapped in a parallel universe that was like something out of a comic book—the dark and gritty kind, not the campy, brightly-coloured kind. She'd apparently just fought a superpowered Nazi. And she had no idea how to get back to her family or even tell them she was still alive. That was cause enough for a good, long cry. She fell into bed and curled up there, clutching a pillow until she fell asleep.

"I'm sorry, George," she murmured. "I'm sorry, kids…I'm so sorry."


End file.
